


Threads of the Webspinner

by Moriche



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, College of Winterhold Questline, Dark Brotherhood - Freeform, Elder Scrolls Lore, Gen, Skyrim Main Quest, Thalmor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-03-31 14:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3982243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moriche/pseuds/Moriche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skyrim teeters on the edge of a Civil War. Dragons are coming back. Trouble is brewing in the Dark Brotherhood. Can Bricca, a Breton vampire, hold her own against Astrid and carry out the will of the Sithis? Will Veryn, a Dunmer Dragonborn mage turned murderer, be able to save the world from the verge of destruction?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. She Sells Sanctuary

 

**Chapter I**

 

**She Sells Sanctuary**

 

* * *

 

 

_Pain._ It was all the prisoner knew as he sat huddled against the wall, listening intently for any sounds that pierced through the darkness. The only thing he heard were the tormented screams of the others reverberating through the halls. He would be safe as long as there weren't any footsteps. Footsteps meant Thalmor. Thalmor meant more pain. They would take him, again, and torture him, again, hoping he would give up more information. The cell was too dark to see and the prisoner had lost any track of time. Faintly he tried to cling to memories of a better place and a better time, to preserve a sense of self, but ever since Elenwen had blinded one of his eyes he had lost all hope, only wondering when he would go mad from the constant pain. Taunting words, spoken by people in the past, echoed through his mind. _You will scream, mortal. You're going to die in there._ The latter was for sure. The longer he stayed here, the closer his death would finally come, and he was condemned to waiting for it in this broken, useless body that was covered in his own filth and blood.

 

As always, the footsteps came eventually and a thin ray of light fell into his cell as the door opened. The prisoner tried to shy away from his captors, but the chains that held his wrists to the wall were too short for him to move. One of the Thalmor kicked him in the side, the point of the boot hitting exactly between two ribs. Unable to defend himself, he merely winced as they unlocked the restraints and shackled his wrists in front of him. The metal bit into his bruised, bloodied flesh, sending agonizing jolts of pain through his nerves whenever he moved the slightest. A glove, covered with metal plates, hit the swollen and burned side of his face and the guards laughed when he buckled over, his body twisting in agony. The guards came in a pair. There were always two of them, a precaution in case one of the prisoners somehow managed to break free of one. He had tried it, hoping that the second guard would kill him, but the Thalmor had not allowed him to die. Limply he hung between the two, letting himself being dragged away to the questioning rooms. He counted the flagstones on the floor, already knowing each little crack and groove. From the corner of his eye he saw the grey leather coat of the Thalmor and the filthy strands of his own long hair trailing over the ground. The amount of stones was wrong, he thought. They were taking him somewhere different. The prisoner heard the sound of a door being unlocked and opened, and suddenly the freezing wind from outside washed over him. He shivered, instinctively closing his eyes against the dim lamps around the courtyard of Northwatch Keep. He could hear horses, and smell them too, and Thalmor talking to each other. The guards dropped him in the snow and left. Was it still winter then? Or had a year passed already? He squinted at the Thalmor surrounding him, too afraid to move. He cringed when someone near started yelling, agitated and loud.

 

“I don't care what she says! If he dies from the cold, the boys over in Alinor will blame _us_ , and not her. Get some boots and a coat on him before you head off to Solitude.”

 

The man was speaking Altmeris, but the prisoner understood some of it. Apparently, a ship had arrived from the Summerset Isles and was now moored in Solitude. He was to be brought aboard and then taken to Alinor for further questioning. Perhaps he would die before he got there? Maybe the gods would be kind enough to wreck the ship?

 

Someone freed his hands and ankles and threw him clothes, looming over him to make sure he didn't try anything. The prisoner couldn't stop shaking, using his good hand  to  put them on, the warmth more than welcome but the cloth sticking painfully to his open wounds. The Thalmor then pulled him to his feet, and he would have screamed if he could when his weight landed on his broken foot. There were threads wiring his mouth shut however, cutting deep in his lips, an idea of Elenwen. He couldn't talk when she didn't want him to, but her main reason had probably been to take one more thing away from him, to try and humiliate him even more. He was taken to a horse, a hood pulled over his head and when one of the Thalmor had helped him in the saddle his wrists were shackled together again. The chain rattled against the saddle when he huddled in his new cloak, fear gnawing away at his insides.  _Azura?_ He called upon the daedra by force of habit, but she remained silent as always.  _Black-handed Mephala? Boethiah-who-grants-no-mercy? Anyone?_

 

Hours must have passed since they had left the Keep. The prisoner had almost grown used to the riding when the horses suddenly halted and his guards started to shout and yell. He wished he could see what was going on, especially when an arrow whistled past his head and landed in the Thalmor next to him, making a squishing noise when it passed through flesh. The mer fell from his horse, thudding when he hit the ground, while the horse neighed in panic. The prisoner ducked forward, trying to hold on to his saddle. The cold had numbed his hands and fingers, keeping some of the pain away. There was another thud and the cries in Altmeris made place for busy chattering in Tamrielic. There had been an ambush, but why? Were these Stormcloaks?  He desperately wished he knew what was going on and in whose hands he had fallen now. If they were friendly, he might have a chance to survive, but instead he was dragged from the horse, passing out from the pain of his back hitting the ground.

 

A few times he regained his consciousness but he slipped back into oblivion almost immediately. He was lying on a cart, disoriented and sick. Vaguely he recalled someone forcing him to drink and eat, but his memory was hazy. When he found himself able to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time the prisoner concluded he was no longer travelling, because he was lying curled up on a wooden floor and he could not feel any movement around him. His hands were still chained together, he still was unable to see and when he tried to move his lips the threads stitched across them stung in the half-healed gashes, ripping them open once more. Dried blood had left the distinctive taste of iron in his mouth. Each time he took a breath, the burns on the side of his ribcage flared up. His back was worse, the countless welts and lashes making it feel like it was on fire and when he moved his head slightly his hair stuck to the open wounds, but nothing of it compared to the excruciating pain in his face and skull. For a long time the prisoner didn't move and focused on his breathing, in and out through his nose, until he heard people talking. It was hard to concentrate on their words, but he forced himself to listen in and try to understand what they were saying, hoping to find out what in Oblivion was happening to him.

 

One of the voices seemed to come from high up, near the roof: a woman who spoke with a harsh Nordic accent and who sounded rather amused. The other voice was a woman as well, who seemed confused, but the prisoner couldn't place her accent. It wouldn't have been out of place in Valenwood, so for now he addressed the two in his head as the Nord and the Bosmer. It was mostly the Nord who was doing the talking, explaining to the Bosmer that the latter owed a kill to the Dark Brotherhood, laughing as she talked about the murder on "an old hag, butchered in her own orphanage." The prisoner shifted his weight slightly, his mind trying to explore the possibilities of the situation. So, he had fallen into the hands of the illustrious assassin's guild. He had not even known they still existed and had in fact presumed them to be wiped out after the Great War. He lifted his head a little, trying to ignore the pain that jabbed like a needle just behind his right eyeball. The Nord, who clearly was in charge, was adamant about the repaying of her kill.

 

"You see, one person cannot leave this room alive. But... which one? Go on, see if you can figure it out. Make your choice. Make your kill. I just want to observe... and admire."

 

He heard how the Bosmer started to walk around the room, talking to different people. He concluded there were others as well, and from their reactions and muffled voices he made out they were also held captive. The Bosmer must have been inexperienced, he thought. She was asking everyone in the room who they were and why someone would want to kill them, listening eagerly to what seemed to be the entire life stories of the people around him. He didn't see the sense in it, not when it was just as easy to slide a dagger between two ribs or slice a throat and be done with it. He was unable to answer her questions when she reached him, but the sound of her voice gave him a good idea where she stood and where her head was. The prisoner took a deep breath through his nose and pushed himself onto his knees, trying to keep the contents of his stomach down as pain flared through his body. _One person cannot leave this room alive._ Now that he was no longer in the clutches of the Thalmor, he wondered if he could somehow force the situation to his hand. The idea that came into his mind was a dangerous one, but with it came a faint glimmer of determination, and if he could pull it off he wouldn't be the one to die in here today. And if he did, it would be a blessing.

 

The Bosmer crouched in front of him. He could hear her breathing and the way her voice faded as she turned her head away from him, complaining loudly to the Nord about his silence. He decided it was now or never and grabbed his chance. Gritting his teeth against the sudden surge of pain he lifted his hands and pulled them over the Bosmer's head, causing the chain between his shackles to lay taut against her throat. He leaned back with all of his weight as he tried to choke her. She started to panic almost immediately, struggling and calling out for help to the other woman. When she fell backwards, his back slamming against the floor, he would have screamed too, had he been able to. With her hands she pawed at the chain and at his own hands and broken fingers, her boots scraping in vain over the floor. The pain in his hands and wrists was debilitating and the strain the prisoner was putting on them was making everything so much worse, but he felt how the woman’s motions became slower. Only when her body went limp did he release his grip, crawling away from under her. He fell to his side, drawing his knees to his chest, his body trembling. Blood was dripping down his hands and seeped on the floor, the pain nearly made him pass out. What had he been thinking? He breathed in and out through his nose, too exhausted to defend himself when the other woman jumped down from something and walked towards him. At the very least, it was a good sign that she hadn't interrupted him earlier. Roughly, the Nord removed the hood, dragging it over the burns. He cowered and then blinked against the sudden light that stung his eye. He was in a shack, dimly lit by a fire burning in the hearth. On the ground, very close to him, lay the Bosmer, her head turned purple and her eyes bulging out.

 

"Sithis," the Nord said, her voice flat and devoid of emotion.

 

The prisoner rolled his left eye upwards, glancing at her. She was clad in leather armour, dyed black and red. Under her hooded face she wore a mask, leaving only her blue eyes visible, which betrayed a certain amount of surprise. When she withdrew a knife and grasped his chin he started shivering uncontrollably, afraid of what would follow, but all she did was cut through the threads that held his mouth closed.

 

"Explain," she demanded.

 

The prisoner spat out blood, struggling to regain his voice.

  
"Water," he managed to grate out, his throat dry and raw. He watched in silence how the woman stepped back to the other side of the shack and returned with a goblet, lifting it to his mouth and allowing him to drink when she saw he was unable to lift his hands. The water was cool and refreshing and above all clean, but it tasted odd. Mountain flower, he thought, recognizing it. While it was by far not enough to repair the extensive damage done to his body it dulled the pain temporarily, clearing up some of the clouds in his head. He took it as a hopeful sign that the Nord hadn't killed him at the spot.

 

"Explain yourself," the woman said again. "Why?"

 

"I repaid your kill," he managed to grind out. It was really hard to find the words he was looking for and even harder to form a coherent sentence, and his voice sounded so different to his ears that it was as if someone else was speaking.

 

The woman snorted. "She was about to become my initiate."

 

"She was stupid." The words had left his mouth before he could stop them and his face flushed as he realized his mistake. The woman chuckled and with some difficulty he lifted up one hand slightly from the floor, slick with his own blood. "If I could kill her in this state she can't have been any good." He closed his eyes, struggling to keep conscious.

 

The Brotherhood assassin laughed out loud. "And here I thought this was going to be just another simple initiation. What is your name, Dark Elf?"

 

"Veryn," he answered.

 

"Surname?"

 

"Uvirith." He let his head hang down limply. It was hard to remember even something as simple as that.

 

"What did the Thalmor want with you?"

 

He lowered his head even further at the question. It was something he didn't want to think about and surely didn't wish to answer. The assassin gripped his chin and forced his head up, drawing her finger across some of the burns that ran down from his right eye, causing him to scream.

 

"Please," he heard himself gasp. "Please don't. _Please stop_." Once he had thought himself to be above begging, but that was before his capture. Everything was different now. _He_ was different now. The woman withdrew her hand, but still held up his head.

 

"Just answer the question." She didn't seem to be a person of much words or elaborate speech.

 

Refusing to answer would just cause him more pain and, almost as important, it would antagonize her. He didn't fear her, yet, not like he feared Elenwen, but he knew she could do everything Elenwen did. Maybe he could throw her a bone and hope she'd gnaw on that and didn't ask further.

 

"I'm a Daedra worshipper," he said.

 

The Nord gave him a deadpan stare and then released his head before she sat down on the ground next to him, chuckling.

 

"Nice try," she said, tucking away some stray tresses of blonde hair under her hood. "But almost all of you Dark Elves are. The Thalmor care about Talos instead of your odd gods."

She reached out again with her hand and Veryn froze in dread as he anticipated the pain that certainly would come again, but the assassin seemed to have changed her mind. "Where do you live?"

 

"Whiterun."

 

When he saw her eyes lighten up he knew he made a mistake. Under her mask, the Nord was probably smirking. She leant back, tapping her fingers on the ground as she pondered his answer.

 

" _I_ think that you might be the Dragonborn," she said eventually.

 

He lifted his head too fast. His sight blurred, the room spun and some of the wounds of his back ripped open as his hair pulled away from them. He cringed, cowering on the ground, when he realized his reaction had just given him away.

 

" _How...?_ " He coughed, felt fresh blood trickle into his mouth. "Why would you think that?"

 

"A variety of reasons. You just happened to be a Dark Elf from Whiterun as well, held in custody of the Thalmor. But mostly because of this." She pensively touched the holes and gashes around his mouth, causing him to jerk his head away in pain. "They must have wanted to make sure you did not kill them with your voice."

 

Veryn tried to return her gaze evenly, but he was shaking too much to keep his eye steady.

 

"And what if that's true?"

 

"Then you would be of use to me," she answered. "Even if it's not true, you still might be of use. Your kill was admirable and if I am honest, you intrigue me. Now tell me, is it true?"

 

He nodded.

 

"Prove it then." She gestured around the room. Veryn slowly followed her movements with his head. There were three other prisoners, kneeling on the ground. They were hooded, a black bag cast over their head, and their hands were bound behind their back. "Kill one of them for me, to make up for the dead Wood Elf."

 

Despite the numbing effect of the healing potion tears ran down his face when he crawled around the floor. The sight of his raw flesh, torn open nearly to the bone, filled him with nausea and disgust. He gritted his teeth, slowly steadying his breath, all the while aware of the assassin watching him. Now was not the time to break down. Not yet. He could do this. He had to. He had no idea if he was even able to Shout at this moment, but he sat down next to one of the other prisoners and tried to recall the lessons of the Greybeards. The other prisoner grunted and struggled against his bonds, yelling for mercy before soiling himself.

 

_Breath and focus._

 

Veryn directed his thoughts inward and repeated some of the simple meditations he had learned, detaching himself from everything. He had managed to drive the pain away for short periods of time during his imprisonment this way. He could do so now as well. In his mind he formed the words he needed for the Shout, shaping them like images and feeling, experiencing their meaning. Force. Balance. Push.

 

_"Fus Ro Dah!"_

 

He became one with the Shout, and his hoarse voice became raw power, pushing everything in his way aside. The unfortunate prisoner flew backwards, his body arching under an unnatural angle as he hung in the air for a second. When the man landed again the cracking of vertebrae could be heard, and when his head hit the ground with a dull thud he would never move again. Veryn heard the assassin whistle appreciatively in the distance, but he was too tired to react. Exhaustion and fatigue finally caught up with him when the world started spinning around and he lost consciousness.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

He couldn't say how much time had passed when he woke up again, aching over his whole body. He was still on the floor in the shack, but the assassin had removed the manacles. They were lying nearby, stained with blood and skin. They were foul to the touch when his finger brushed against the steel; enchanted to drain away one's magicka. His own reserves were entirely gone and while he could feel the raw energies around him it was impossible to keep a grasp on them, let alone harness the magicka into something useful.

 

"Good. You're awake," the assassin interrupted his thoughts. "You're free to go. I'll give you the key to the shack so you can leave, although in this state you'd probably just die." She crouched next to him and almost tenderly brushed his hair away from his face. He held his breath, trying to move his head away. "I say that we take our relationship to the next level. You have no qualms about killing and easily value your own life higher than that of an innocent bystander." For a moment she halted, no doubt for the dramatic effect. "I would like to officially extend an invitation to you to join my family. The Dark Brotherhood. You may refuse, of course. However, if you do join, I can patch you up. Within a few days you'll be able to function again, and then your new life begins."

 

Veryn had been sure his gods had forsaken him, but now he recognized the meddling black hand of Mephala that steered this situation. Once, a lifetime ago, before his world had broken apart, he had worked as an assassin himself for a while, taking on the occasional writ from the Morag Tong. At the thought of Mephala, the Daedric Prince of deceit and paradox standing at his side, he started laughing.

 

"Fine," he said, managing a wry and painful grimace as he looked up at the Brotherhood member standing over him. "I'll take on your offer."


	2. Halls of Stone

**Chapter II**

 

**Halls of Stone**

 

* * *

 

# 

_T_ _he bright copper curls of the little girl shone in the sun as she skipped away. It was a warm_ _S_ _undas in the east of High Rock, already far past noon. As one of her friends counted down the girl darted away to the barn, certain that she wouldn't be found there. She was very good at playing hide-and-seek and usually won. Bits and pieces of hay clung to her white cotton dress and tickled her legs, smelling sweetly in the languid heat of the day. The girl stood still for a moment, breathing in deeply as she took in the scent. She pushed her hair behind her ears_ _and frowned_ _as she picked up a different smell that lay under that of the hay, something heavy and dark and sickly. The girl moved deeper into the barn_ _and squinted_ _in the dark as she clambered over the bales and letting out a squeal of surprise when she stumbled over something. She crouched down at it and_ _at_ _a closer look she saw it was pale and long and had five slender fingers at the end, around one of which was a thin golden ring set with a garnet. She recognized it instantly: her mothers wedding band. Tears of fear dribbled down her cheeks as she saw the maggots crawling out of the rotten, necrotic flesh. Then the hand moved, curling into a fist and the attached body pushed itself up from the floor, its throat ripped out by large fangs and pulled the now screaming girl into an embrace._

 

While the child's screams still ringed in her ears, Bricca woke up in silence and gasped for breath as she tried to remember where exactly she was. She sat up, pushing her blankets back as the haze of the dream faded away and the contours of the Sanctuary became clearer. Babette, with whom she shared the room, wasn't here tonight and she remembered that the girl was out on a contract. She groaned and peered at the crack in the roof. Outside the sky was still dark, untouched yet by rosy-fingered Azura. If she had to guess, she would say it was about three or four in the morning. Bricca swung her legs over the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes, trying to forget her dream. It didn't work; it never did. The quaint little manor seemed to loom far away in the distance. The dream had been a memory, just an ordinary day when she had been a child three hundred years ago. At least she was used to it by now. Bricca hauled herself off the straw mattress and stretched out. Each time she went to sleep, lively, twisted nightmares would wake her up within hours. She never slept anymore, unless she needed to heal. Yesterday had been such a day, with a contract gone awry. She'd ended up on the pointy end of her target's blade, a messy affair. In the end she'd jumped at him and pierced his neck with her teeth, drinking his blood until he was dead. She had underestimated the man, thought that just because he lived close to her home she could take him out easily. Instead, she had limped back in shame to the Dark Brotherhood's hideout to get some rest.

 

At least the wound had healed. There was nothing left on her left thigh as a reminder of the dagger that had cleaved half through it, the pale flesh smooth as usual, save for some old battle marks. She smiled approvingly and reached for a change of fresh clothes. The loose pants and wide tunic so popular in Skyrim were simple and effective, easy to get around in, nothing like the posh stitched doublets that were so very fashionable in High Rock. Glancing at the mirror, she put her hair in a bun to keep it away from her face, the dark, red tinted eyes of her own reflection peering back at her through the cheap glass: an average looking copper-haired woman of around thirty who would hardly get a second look. She picked up the various knives laying on the side-table and hid them in various folds and pockets. They were easy for her to reach but invisible from the outside. It was almost completely dark in the silent Sanctuary when she left her room, save for the vague glow that came from Arnbjorn's smithy. Once in the kitchen, Bricca poked up the fire carefully, filling a kettle with water and adding some ground coffee beans and sugar to it. Nazir had brought the beans with him when he had visited Hammerfell recently. They were used to make a strong, bitter drink that was barely known throughout the Empire, but the Redguards were fond of it. Although she was unable to feel the highly acclaimed invigorating effect of the coffee she had grown fond of the taste and smell. It was strong, a change from the normal food that always tasted bland to her. After the coffee had boiled she poured the hot liquid in a thick, earthenware cup and decided to return to her bed and wait until morning. As she passed the half-round stone wall in the middle of the Sanctuary she halted, sensing something: a faint heartbeat, a dark silhouette hiding in the shadows.

 

“Can't sleep either?” she asked. The silhouette moved quietly, a dimly glowing red eye looking at her from the dark. It belonged to a Dark Elf that was sitting against the wall, overshadowed by the stone and hidden from sight.

 

“Never.” The elf chuckled darkly. “How is your leg?”

 

“Good.” Bricca sipped the coffee. “It's hard to notice you hiding around here.”

 

“I didn't want to be seen”, the elf replied, grinning at her. Bricca was never sure if Veryn was mocking her or not, as the heavy scarring on his face made it hard to read his expressions. His right eye was blind and cataracted, opaque and off-white in colour. The skin around it was badly scarred, red and cracked, with raised white lines that branched out like ferns, or lightning, across his cheek and temple until they became thin and nearly invisible. More scars ran across his jaw and lips, pulling the corner of his mouth up as if he was smirking. The left side of his face had scars as well, fainter and less pronounced, and his nose seemed to have been broken at least once. Astrid had introduced him as the Dragonborn when he joined them nearly a year ago and Bricca had been wondering since why a hero like that would decide to stay with the Dark Brotherhood. At least he made for interesting conversations at night, when they were the only ones awake.

 

Bricca smiled back at him. “Are you hiding from someone in particular?”

 

He gave a faint snort as an answer and jerked his chin towards the iron coffin that stood near the pool. "Cicero. That bloody jester seems to have trouble understanding that I don't care to answer his annoying questions."

 

Bricca grunted in response. Cicero was a newcomer to the Sanctuary as well. He had come from Cyrodiil only a few weeks ago, from Cheydinhal, and had already stirred up quite the commotion. With him he had taken the body of the Night Mother Herself, one of the most sacred relics the Dark Brotherhood knew. Like Bricca, he followed and respected the Old Ways, but unlike her, Cicero was a raving lunatic. Already she had come to despise the jester's puffy face, fat lips and the pathetic, whiny voice that bubbled up from between them. Like a pig in a feeding through, he had been burrowing himself into everyone's origins and had been grubbing around in their past, breaking one of the most important unwritten rules of the Sanctuary: _know when to shut up_. Even those few members who were relatively open about their lives were still hiding most of who they were and what they had done. But the worst thing about Cicero wasn't the horrible intonation of his voice or his despicable curiosity: it was his tendency to cling to people. The very moment he had found out she still followed the Five Tenets and honoured the Night Mother he had lashed himself to her as if he were a petulant child, vying for her attention every free moment.

 

"I could talk to him if you want," she offered, already dreading the prospect of spending more than a few minutes in Cicero's presence. "He usually seems to listen to me."

 

Veryn shrugged. "I'll be fine."

 

Bricca watched how he conjured a ball of pure light, a soft yellow in colour. With a slight gesture of his hands he sent it hovering in the air above him so it illuminated the crumbled wall he was sitting against. It was made of a dark stone, with deep grooves forming an old script, as if a giant claw had carved them into the wall ages ago: a remnant of a time long past. The Sanctuary was built in an ancient Nordic ruin and currently housed ten assassins and one pet spider. Bricca estimated that half of the place was actually habitable. The rest of it consisted of half collapsed rooms and corridors that were too dangerous to explore. It was a nice representation of the state the whole Dark Brotherhood was in, she thought as she sat down opposite the elf and sipped her coffee. The words of old Festus Krex rang painfully true when he described them as nothing more than a group of ordinary cut-throats.

 

"When did you want to leave for Markarth to do those contracts? I don't like travelling alone much,” Veryn said.

 

She raised the cup as an answer. "Once I've finished my coffee."

 

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

 

The quaint and sleepy town of Falkreath lay about an hours walk south-east of the Sanctuary. It didn't look much different from any other village or hamlet one could find in Skyrim, although it was quite a bit larger than most of them. Still, it didn't yet deserve to be called a city. The town housed the seat of the Jarl of Falkreath Hold, and was in one thing quite unusual: everyone was obsessed with death. Once the site of many battles, a graveyard had formed where the dead were buried, growing ever larger until it had become the largest graveyard in the country. More than half of the walled town consisted of headstones, tended to by the local priests of Arkay, and many of the buildings were named after the dead too: Corpselight Farm and Dead Mans Drink among the most cheerful of them. Even outside the walls the graves spread and in some directions you could walk for hours along the buried remains. Veryn and Bricca made their way to the stables over the small dirt roads, overgrown with moss and grass, their hoods pulled up to shield themselves against the perpetually drizzling rain. It rarely was dry around Falkreath and on the rare occasions it didn't rain it was foggy or at the very least clouded, lending the place a gloomy atmosphere where nobody really seemed to bother about the occasional assassin visiting the farmers market once a week. This early in the morning there was hardly anyone out and about. The high priest of Arkay, an ancient looking High Elf, was sitting on a carved wooden bench just outside the chapel, resting his hands on his walking cane. He appeared to be staring off into the distance, but when they passed him he raised his hand in blessing.

 

The road to Markarth was long and rough, becoming increasingly craggier and wild the further they came west. They rode during the day, staying at night in the various little inns along the road. The Reach, the large hold that Markarth was the capital city of, was a treacherous place that teemed with Forsworn and bandits and during the night the roads were simply not safe enough to travel. Bricca despised travelling during the day, but they didn't have much choice. She kept her hood up against the sun, catching odd glances from passing farmers and tradesmen, but at least the bright light didn't bother her that much. They rode mostly in silence, occasionally chatting but mostly minding their own thoughts. Once or twice they had to dismount, the road too badly maintained to ride well and barred by rock slides. A few groups of Imperial Legionnaires busied themselves by clearing the way again, but in general they were too busy fighting the Stormcloaks to regularly keep up the roads. Bricca found herself wondering about the contract she would be picking up in Markarth. She'd have to find a girl named Muiri that was supposed to work at one of the alchemist's shops and ask her who she wanted dead. Once more it was a reminder of the sorry state of the Brotherhood: no Listener, no Black Hand and no Tenets.

 

Bricca had first joined the Dark Brotherhood roughly two hundred and fifty years ago, climbing up the ranks until she had served as silencer along Aedoric Junius, one of the Champions of Cyrodiil, part of the inner circle of the last Septim Emperor. Jauffre, Baurus, Mazoga... all names of the dead now, forgotten by time moving forward. After the crisis, those first years of the Fourth Era had been the glory days of the assassin's guild, a golden era during which nobles across all of Tamriel whispered their name in fear and awe. But then Aedoric had left, disappeared without a trace and had never come back, and within a year the Night Mother spoke to another. Bricca too had left the Dark Brotherhood in the years after that, joining a coven of feral vampires instead. She had stayed there for about forty years, a time of which she barely had any memories, and then the Great War broke out in 175. The coven scattered to the four winds and she travelled Tamriel, following whispered rumours and stray tidings about the Dark Brotherhood, fulfilling the Black Sacrament Sithis knew how many times. In the end she had found them: the last Sanctuary to still exist. That was five years ago, and now it was in the middle of Frostfall of the year 196 of the Fourth Era; and the corpse of the Night Mother had returned to Her children.

 

There were but a few farms around Markarth, the mountainous terrain not well suited for agriculture. The road skirted around a peak and then the city rose up in the distance: an impressive amount of Dwarven buildings carved out of the mountainside with gleaming metal roofs, their bronze colour catching the setting sun. Thousands of years ago, Markarth had been built by the Dwarves and when they had died out, humans had slowly taken it over. Initially they herded their goats between the grand stone buildings, scavenging the occasional bowl or vase they found. But every winter, when snowstorms ravaged their huts, more and more people moved in, sustaining themselves by trade and craftsmanship. Large mines sprawled under the city, rich in silver, exploited for generations by the same old families.

 

"Did you know there is an entire city hidden under this one?" Veryn asked as they neared the stables. Bricca shook her head.

 

"I didn't. There's one of those old ruins underneath?"

 

"Multiple of them. The local court wizard has been digging there for the last decades, uncovering and excavating all sorts of interesting and not so interesting artefacts."

 

"You know him?"

 

He nodded. "Calcelmo? He's the foremost scholar of Dwemer research. All the standard handbooks are of his hand. Not a bad man for an Altmer, if a little eccentric."

 

The main gate into Markarth was guarded heavily, more so than Bricca had initially expected. The Dark Elf passed the guards without trouble, but when she passed the heavy bronze gates one of the soldiers beckoned her over.

 

"Please show us your face, ma'am," he said, his own face obscured by a full helmet. Bricca complied, throwing back her hood. She squinted against the sun and waited while the guard scrutinized her Breton features closely. When he was convinced she was not a threat he motioned for her to move along. They ended up at the Silver-Blood Inn, a somewhat dingy tavern with watered down drinks but clean rooms and decent food. The locals were curt, not exactly unfriendly but clearly distrusting of everyone that came from outside the city. They didn't like strangers much and when Bricca asked around about Muiri the answer, if she even got one, was always 'no'. They had no idea where the girl worked, who she was or they were simply lying about it.

 

The next day she went out into the city, leaving Veryn to fulfil his own contract, and carefully navigated the countless stairs and cliffs while seeking out every store that remotely resembled an alchemist's one. In one of them, a sleazy old man tried to palm off a bone amulet on her, assuring it was imbued with true Reach Magic and in another the owner was selling skooma under the counter. She had the feeling she was wasting her time when she entered the Hag's Cure, but once she inside she could see this was the home of a reputable apothecary. The shop was one of the most curious she had ever seen. It was part living room, with a hearth and some chairs, part shop, with a counter stowed full of things, and part workroom. Fine glass bottles, filled with all sorts of wicked concoctions, were exposed on the counter and there were baskets with assorted ingredients. Wooden racks covered nearly every empty part of the wall, stocked full of dried herbs and flowers. Large bundles of mushrooms, garlic and more plants hung upside down from hooks in the ceiling beams. The resulting scent that hung in the store was a peculiar mixture of sweet and earthly aromas with the musty smell of old books thrown in. The owner of the shop was engaged in conversation with an older Nord that apparently had a problem with his wife and wished for a potion to resolve his withered ambitions. The owner was quite a sight to behold too, with ancient wrinkled skin and claw-like fingers. Her face was heavily tattooed with black lines spread out like the web of a spider and her glinting dark brown eyes were hidden underneath heavy lids.

 

"Nothing a bit of Reach magic can't cure," she said to the other customer, grinning eerily. The woman could easily pass for a hedge witch, someone practising a form of magic that was usually passed over from mother to daughter, often rooted firmly in superstition and folk traditions. The Reach had a large amount of such customs, still practised by the Forsworn and native Reachmen that were strongly attuned with nature. Some stories even told about people replacing their own heart to become immortal and about witches that could shift their form to that of a bird at will. Bricca usually dismissed such stories as mere myths and folk tales, used only to scare and entertain children. Then again, she had initially held dragons to be legends as well, save for Martin who had turned into an avatar of Akatosh, and these days the destructive winged killers ruled over the air in Skyrim.

 

"Can I help you with something?"

 

A demure looking girl, still in her twenties, was looking at Bricca expectantly.

 

"I am looking for someone named Muiri," Bricca said. The girl smiled and blushed.

 

"That's me."

 

Bricca smiled back at her, hoping to set the girl at ease. "Can I speak to you in private for a moment?"

 

She saw Muiri's eyes dart off to the alchemist and then she nodded, leading Bricca to a closed off side room. There were even more ingredients stored there. A simple bed was pushed against the wall next to a cabinet filled with empty glass bottles and vials.

 

"What did you come for?" Muiri asked, uncertainty crossing her face.

 

"Your prayers have been answered," Bricca responded.

 

"My pray- oh!" Confusion rapidly made place for a look of disbelief on Muiri's face. "You're from the Dark Brotherhood!" she whispered. "The Black Sacrament – it actually worked? Divines, I can't believe -"

 

"I wouldn't invoke them while discussing business like this," Bricca warned. Muiri paled slightly. "Who is it you wish to see dead?"

 

Muiri narrowed her eyes and scowled in the distance. "My former fiancé. His name is Alain Dufont. I didn't know it at first, but he turned out to be the leader of a group of bandits. He – he seduced me and everything was fine at first, but then he used me to rob the Shattershields in Windhelm. They're old friends of mine and I was visiting them because their daughter Friga had been murdered. Alain used me to get close to them and once he had taken what he wanted he dropped me like a piece of garbage, while my friends blame me and think I'm some kind of... monster." Tears sprang in Muiri's eyes, but Bricca couldn't say if they came from grief or anger. "Alain Dufont took my life, so now I'm taking his. He's holed up in some Dwarven ruin near Windhelm. It's called Raldbthar."

 

Bricca nodded. "That is understandable. Is that everything you need from us?"

 

Muiri hesitated for a bit, her voice soft when she talked again. "There is more. I – Could you kill someone else as well?"

 

"If you pay for it, of course I can."

 

"The Shattershields... I was like a daughter to Tova and a sister to Nilsine and Friga, but they didn't understand that I was used. They refuse to believe my innocence! If Nilsine dies too, maybe Tova will realize what she has lost. Maybe she'll see that I was just as much of a daughter to her as the others."

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

Once she went outside people were yelling and shouting. Panicked masses ran over the narrow stairways towards the Temple of Dibella in the centre of the city, elbowing each other out of the way to be the first to reach safety. Bricca frowned, having half a mind to get back inside the apothecary again, but curiosity about what was going on won over. She clambered on a nearby rock, elevating herself above the crowd. The situation could turn sour any moment: just one foot that slipped too far over the edge of the narrow stairs and someone would fall to their death. Behind the crowd ran city guards, trying to fight off a group of scrawny men in fur kilts. They wielded bone spears and strange antlered helmets and their naked chests were adorned with black ink and blue paint. Flocks of dark birds fought next to them, crows and ravens that dove from the sky and harassed the crowd and guards with their beaks and claws.

 

"The Reach belongs to the Forsworn!" one of them called out as he stabbed a guard through the throat. "The day of glory has arrived!”

 

"Drive 'em back into the mine!" another guard yelled moments before his head was swept half off his shoulders, hanging on thick, bloodied tendrils of neck.

 

The carnage seemed to confine itself to the Forsworn and the City Guard, leaving the citizens to run away in fear. Bricca watched the battle shift deeper into the heart of the city as the Forsworn fought their way towards the city gate. Then a dreadful scream echoed past the Dwarven buildings. A man had lost his balance and now dangled from the edge, clinging on to it with his fingertips for dear life. No such luck befell him, for the crowd trampled his hands. He fell down the cliff in a graceful motion, landing in the river far below where his lifeless body washed against the rocky edge. Only when the peace had returned to the city somewhat did Bricca move back to the Silver-Blood inn. The Forsworn outbreak was obviously the talk of the evening. She picked up all sorts of little details while passing the groups of citizens that huddled together, still shaken to the core. Veryn had already reached the inn before her, she saw when she looked through the taproom. He sat in a corner and watched his surroundings warily, keeping away from the local miners that were spending their hard-earned wages on drinking cheap ale and filling their stomachs with greasy sausages.

 

"What are you drinking?" Bricca asked when she sat down at his table, peering curiously at the small glass filled with a brown liquor.

 

"They call it genever. It's a local spirit flavoured with juniper berries, a nice change from the usual mead, ale and cider." He slowly spun the glass around. "It's not bad. Did you succeed in finding your contact?"

 

She nodded. "I did. I had to visit pretty much every shop that had something to do with alchemy before I ran into her. Got all the details I need now though. She wants me to go to Windhelm. It's going to take weeks before I'm finished there."

 

Veryn grimaced in response. "That's the other side of the country. Good luck with that. Windhelm has never been my favourite city. The local Nords there do not look favourable on my kin." He downed the remains of his drink in one go. "They lack the Forsworn though and there's too much damn Thalmor in this city too. I'll be glad when I'm out." His eye flashed over to the door nervously. "I'm sure you picked up something about the little stunt the Forsworn pulled today?"

 

"I got, in fact, caught up in the middle of it," Bricca answered, declining the barmaid's question if she wanted something to drink or eat. "Which is why I arrived here only after dark."

 

Veryn watched the maid walk away, waiting until she was out of earshot. "They broke out of Cidhna Mine where they were kept as slaves. As you probably noticed, it caused quite the stir in the city." The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. "Causing my target to accidentally fall down was the easiest kill I've ever done."


	3. Killing in the Name of

**Chapter III**

 

**Killing in the Name of**

 

* * *

Both the city of Windhelm and its surroundings were grim and dark. Bricca pulled up her woollen scarf again in a vain attempt to keep the thick flakes of snow out of her nose and mouth. The icy north-eastern wind flogged her clothes and attempted to pull back the hood of her anorak. She had to hold on to its fur lined edge to keep it in place, squinting as she tried to orientate herself in the foreign, frozen landscape. The river Yorgrim was frozen solid this far into the winter. Some of the locals had been travelling on the ice itself, sliding over it with metal blades bound under their shoes, but even they had not ventured this far into the wilderness. For the last few hours, Bricca had left the civilized world behind. Not far from the fifth waterfall, some guards in Windhelm had explained, there stood a large tree that was split in two by lightning. There weren't any real roads that led to the ruin, so she had to make do with landmarks.

 

She plodded through the snow, sometimes knee-deep, and was reminded again of why she did not like to do a contract like this in winter. With the amount of travelling time involved, contracts usually were long and drawn out, often taking over a month to complete. Half of the year, when Skyrim was wrapped in a blanket of snow, travelling took even longer. Some passes were cut off and became impassable, adding days to what already was a long journey. She grinned at a passing fox, its pelt white to fit in with it's surroundings. Patience was a virtue you learned all by itself when doing this sort of jobs. When she came across the split tree, hours later, dusk had set in. The tree's gnarled silhouette stood black against the rapidly darkening sky. Someone had once nailed a wooden sign to it, with a large arrow pointing to the south-west. Bricca hoped this time she would not end up near yet another cave, mine or other place that was very definitely not the Dwarven ruin she was looking for. She followed the small trail that led up through the mountains, trying not to sink away in the banks of snow. Small heaps of stone with sticks in them stood at the edge of the trail, roughly indicating where she had to go next. Eventually the trail turned into a series of narrow stairs, hewn into the mountain itself.

 

When she found herself near the foot of the towering building of grey stone Bricca dropped into a crouch, hiding herself in the shadows of two scraggly trees. She listened intently to her surroundings, disregarding the heartbeats of the birds and critters around her. Instead she focused on the slower pounding that originated from within the chest of the lookout the bandits had posted on one of the terraces that led up to the entrance of the ruin. The man was sitting near a brazier, rubbing his hands against the cold and clearly not aware of her presence. A pity for him and good luck for her. She moved along the lower wall of the terrace, watching carefully where she put her feet. Even the thick layer of snow barely crunched under her shoes as she made her way up to the stairs. The lookout poked in the brazier, stoking up the fire a bit while he muttered angrily to himself. Wisps of greasy grey hair hung in a ratty ponytail on his back. She could smell him from a distance already: he stank of stale sweat and beer; rotten teeth and food with too much garlic added. Step by step Bricca moved closer, withdrawing a long knife and holding it ready. Then, with one fluid movement, she clasped her right hand over the mouth of the lookout and stabbed one of his kidneys before slitting his throat with her left hand, cutting the arteries and trachea. The man made odd, gargling noises as he drowned in his own blood. Bricca waited until he had fallen unconscious and then rifled through his clothes, taking his purse with her.

 

A wave of sweltering heat hit her face when she stepped inside the ruin. The air was humid and water was leaking from the metal pipes that ran along the wall. Moss had overtaken parts of the crumbling floor and walls, forming spots of green on the dull rusted brown of the pipes. Another bandit was sleeping in the hall, snoring loudly. Bricca quietly made her way past him, leaving him be. Raldbthar was mostly collapsed. There were but a few halls and passages still intact and the bandits had claimed them all for themselves. She passed an improvised kitchen, stocked with jugs and plates that had probably been taken from deeper inside the ruin. These bandits were almost all men, although a few of them were loudly enjoying some female company. Piles of armour and filthy clothing were spread out on the floor, empty bottles that had once contained booze lay sprawled around the bedrolls. Mildew had crept up some of the cloth and food, only adding to the pungent stench of unwashed bodies. Muiri had described her ex-boyfriend as attractive, with dark hair and a dark beard. He liked to wear well-tailored clothes and he possessed quite a unique weapon: a huge enchanted war hammer. Bricca shook her head as she wrinkled her nose at the motley crew lingering around. She doubted Alain would be sleeping along this rowdy bunch of drunks. Someone pretending to be that sophisticated would probably have a room of his own, especially if he was the leader of the group. She moved on in silence until she found herself on a broad stone ridge that overlooked a room filled with a handful of men. They sat on chairs around a fire, chatting quietly. Bricca made herself comfortable on the ridge as she listened in to their conversation.

 

"That stupid cow was only good for screwing anyway," she heard one person yawn. "You got some more of that sugar, Alain?"

The man addressed as Alain was slightly darker than Bricca had initially thought, with strong features and a thin, cruel mouth. He nodded as an answer and procured a pipe that he proceeded to pack with tobacco, adding small amounts of a crystalline white powder. The pipe was passed around while they started playing a card game. Bricca waited patiently, observing them from above until they left for their beds hours later, drowsy from the smoked moon sugar and copious amounts of beer.

 

When the air was filled with snores and grunts Bricca leapt down, landing lightly on her feet and stalked towards Alain. He was laying sprawled out on a pile of furs, fast asleep. Bricca smirked and pulled her scarf down. She knelt down and ran her fingers along Dufont's neck. His hair was just long enough to reach his shoulders. Leaning her weight on one hand, she pulled it away from his skin with the other hand and then clamped it over his mouth so he wouldn't scream. With her teeth she ripped into his throat. The man started to struggle immediately, trying to bite her hand and grabbing a knife hidden under his pillow. Bricca tightened her grip on his jaw and drew upon her blood magic, forcing him to do her bidding. Alain Dufont slumped back and she drained his precious blood and felt it running through her own veins. Bricca grinned and licked the blood from her canines, leaving him to bleed out and die.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

The murderer of Friga Shattershield had never been caught. More than half a year had passed since Friga's defiled and broken body had been found on the marketplace and the killer was still walking free. Worse, he was still making more victims every few months. Only two weeks ago the barmaid of the Candlehearth Hall had been found in the graveyard, what was left of her brutally ripped to pieces. His particular gruesome way of killing had earned this serial killer the nickname of "the Butcher".

 

"It's one of those greyskins," the innkeeper of Candlehearth Hall exclaimed to everyone that wanted to listen. To Bricca's surprise, she had quite the audience. "No true Nord would ever do something like this."

 

"That filth should get back to Morrowind where they belong!" Several heads in the taproom bobbed up and down in agreement at the drunken shouting of a man Bricca had seen outside a few hours ago. He had been harassing a Dark Elven woman, threatening to pay her a visit at night. "We should kick them out of the city like we did with those scalebacks."

 

It was a good thing for the Dark Elven community that people like this Rolff Stone-Fist limited themselves to empty threats, Bricca thought. At least they were all quite talkative, especially once she had thrown in a few off-handed remarks herself as well. People like this were so easy to manipulate. When the conversation flowed back to the Butcher and Friga Bricca perked up her ears. It turned out that the Shattershields were both a well-known and well-loved clan within Windhelm. Many, if not all of the local Nords heavily sympathized with the family's loss. The Shattershields belonged to the elite here. They ran a successful shipping company, employed a large amount of Argonian contractors and granted part of their income to charity and the Temple of Talos. They fulfilled, in short, an exemplary role within Windhelm and that such a fate had befallen precisely them had come as a shock to everyone. Little did they know what the future would hold for them in store, Bricca thought as she raised her glass to drink on the memory of Susanna and Friga.

 

The following day she went down to the docks. They lay outside of the city walls and to reach the dock gate she had to pass through a small part of the Grey Quarter. Ragged Dark Elves scowled at the endless stream of carts and goods passing in and out of the city, many of them already drowning their sorrows with a bottle of liquor. Bricca heard them shout at each other and at the city guards in their strange, guttural tongue.

 

"Watch where you're going, filthy N'wah," one of them spat at her when he ran into her. Only once Bricca stood at the stone quays, listening to the gulls flying over, she noticed that one of her purses had gone missing. At least that particular one hadn't contained a lot of money, just a few pieces of silver, but it stung her pride that she hadn't seen the elf cutting it loose.

 

The Argonian dockworkers were in an even more sorry state than the Dark Elves she'd seen earlier. They slept in a few old warehouses that were converted to communal housing space. Despite the cold most of them walked around shirtless, stowing away boxes and crates. Bricca watched them from a distance and when they paused for lunch she sought the attention of one of them; an elderly lizard with torn and damaged scales. His name was Stands-in-Shallows, and while he was distrustful of her at first that changed once Bricca handed him a silver thaler.

 

"There's another one in for you if you help me out with a few questions," she said.

Stands-in-Shallows blinked his reptilian eyes a few times.

 

"Two more," he said slowly. "That should be enough for a bottle of skooma. I feel like my scales are clawing into me. You help an old Argonian out, I help a pretty young lady like you."

 

For a mere addict the dockworker proved to be a valuable source of information. Torbjorn Shatter-Shield was the _pater familias_ of the clan. It was he who had broadly expanded the shipping company, sailing not just to Dawnstar but reaching out to the coasts of High Rock and Morrowind. After the death of one of his two daughters Torbjorn had disappeared from the company and left the work to his secretaries and underlings. He was seldom seen and rumour had it he had started drinking substantially.

 

"They see us working," Stands-in-Shallows said. "And they think we are nothing but stupid beasts." His tongue flitted in and out between his sharp teeth in annoyance. "And so they keep talking, and we keep listening. We do not have a home any more, so we have to stay here. Sometimes we get paid. Sometimes, cargo goes missing." He peered at Bricca with half closed eyes. "And sometimes, we are the ones who talk, especially when it earns us some more coin."

 

Bricca spent the rest of the week shadowing the Shatter-Shields. It was easy to locate their house on the western side of the city. It was large and spacious, rising proudly above most of the other houses surrounding it. In this quarter of Windhelm the houses were detached and walled, and some of them even had small gardens. Only one house, neighbouring that of the Shatter-Shields, stuck out like a sore tooth. Abandoned, it's windows boarded up and metal gates rusted, it looked completely out of place. To Bricca's great annoyance, Torbjorn had taken precautions against the Butcher. His house was guarded by two burly Nords and every time Nilsine or her mother went anywhere in the city, armed guards went with them. Even when praying in the Temple of Talos they kept an eye out for anything unusual. Bricca had considered killing Nilsine in the Temple, dragging the girl into one of the small side-chapels to stab her to death, but that option would surely alert the guards and lead to a wild chase through Windhelm. No, it probably would be best if she came up with a way to sneak into the house of Clan Shatter-Shield at night in order to kill Nilsine in her sleep. If she maimed the body the kill would be placed on the head of the Butcher, not on hers. Usually when someone ended up being murdered, the first suspects were the strangers and travellers in town. From her observation post, hidden in a shadowed nook across the house of the Shatter-Shields, Bricca peered at the derelict house next to it. Nearly all buildings here had complicated roofs, with multiple levels and small outcroppings, balconies and decorations everywhere. Both houses also bordered the city wall, which in turn was surrounded by impassable mountains. This part of the wall had no guards patrolling it, for it was remote and impossible to reach from the outside. She moved her eyes to the burly Nords again. If they were any good, going in through the front door was not going to work. She leapt down, landing on her feet silently and crept through the shadows to the abandoned house.

 

The mouldy floor of the entry hall creaked under her feet. It had not been hard to enter the abandoned house, which had been marked by a withered sign that said 'Hjerim', unseen. The lock of the half rotten door had given way very quickly under her lockpicks. Bricca paused when she saw the thick layer of dust that covered most of the planks. It was disturbed in places, footprints clearly visible, and there were long tracks as if something had been dragged through. In the dusty air hung the thick, unmistakable smell of old blood. Someone else was also using this place, but she had no idea what for. Maybe it was just some homeless vagrant looking for shelter against the cold. She knelt down at one of the footprints, careful not to disturb it. Little particles of dust had settled on the floor again already, so the visitor had not been here recently. Bricca focused on her surroundings, trying to detect any living things around, but she heard nothing but rats and other vermin. She felt slightly relieved as she went upstairs, climbing towards the attic. Being caught while sneaking around like this would only cause suspicion, even if technically she hadn't done anything wrong yet. Bricca opened one of the windows, trying to keep the creaking of the rusty hinges to a minimum and clambered onto the windowsill. The snow made it tricky to scale the roof and twice she nearly fell down. When she reached the city wall at long last she crouched down on it, resting for a few precious minutes. Bricca flexed her fingers and toes, numbed by the cold. Usually she wore thick fur gloves and boots, but obviously those were not suitable for this kind of delicate work. Then she jumped onto the roof of the Shattershields' house. Everything could still go wrong: her foot had to send just one slate roof tile crashing to the ground and the guards would be alerted. Luckily, nothing like that happened and she safely made it to a small balcony. The guards in front of the house had no idea that an assassin had just broken into it.

 

Silent and unnoticed like a spider Bricca crept through the darkened house, checking side rooms to see where her target was. True to traditional Nordic style, the house was sparsely furnished, but the pieces that were visible looked expensive and well-made. Nilsine was in her own room, fast asleep. Bricca watched her for a while. The girl looked tired even when resting, tossing around fitfully. She didn't have the most pretty face around, with a harsh, thin mouth and a pouting expression. With a smile playing around her lips, Bricca unsheathed her dagger. Nilsine died without making so much as a sound when she slit the girls throat. One more soul sent to the Void to serve Sithis forever. Normally she would have left the body immediately, but if she wanted to blame the Butcher Bricca still had some work to do. She cleaned the dagger and meanwhile listened intently if there was anyone coming. It was, however, in the middle of the night and even the servants were sleeping. Bricca reached for a sharp, hooked embalming tool that hung from her belt. According to the priestess of Arkay, who took care of the dead and autopsied murdered bodies, the wounds on earlier victims of the Butcher had been made be the same sort of tool she held now. Countless vicious cuts and slashes on the corpse later, when Nilsine's bed and clothing were drenched in blood and nothing but a mangled heap of flesh remained, Bricca decided it had been nice enough and forced open the window, disappearing into the night.

 

Chaos ensued the following days in Windhelm. Four days after Nilsine was found dead, Bricca decided to leave the Candlehearth Inn with the intention of heading back to Markarth. The streets of Windhelm, however, were packed with people. She finally gave up trying to push through the crowds and decided to ask around what was going on.

 

"They're burying the Shattershield girl and her mother," a Dark Elf growled in a low, raspy voice. He looked young, almost like a child still, and utterly bored as he leaned against a nearby wall, a pipe loosely held between his fingers.

 

Bricca raised an eyebrow. "Was the mother murdered by the Butcher too? I've heard it only was the girl, or did her mother get a heart attack or something like that?"

The elf laughed harshly and brought up the pipe, inhaling deeply. Smoke rose from his mouth as he breathed out again.

 

"Took her own life two days ago, shortly after they found the house. Turns out the neighbouring house was abandoned and that the Butcher made his home there. I've heard they've found the countless remains of dead women in there, all cut up, can you believe it?"

Bricca nodded in response. So that was where the smell of old blood had come from. "Did they catch the Butcher then?"

 

Her answer was a lazy nod. "Turn out it was Ulfric's court wizard. Thrice-damned Nords obviously tried to cover it up, trying to blame it on us, but once they've found an amulet, one traditionally carried by court mages it was clear they had him. Who would've thought?"

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

Nearly two months had passed since Bricca had left for Markarth together with Veryn. It was nearing the end of Evening Star when she walked through the muddy snow that covered the road from Falkreath. She was cold and wet: the water that fell from the sky held the middle ground between heavy rain and hail. Muiri had been more than happy to see her, whispering in revered awe before handing over the other half of the payment. The Dark Brotherhood always demanded half of its pay up front, in case the client refused to pay in the end. It was due to their reputation that they could do so: only in very rare cases the target escaped. There used to be rules for that, Bricca mused. She recalled various Dark Brothers and Sisters who had gone from hunted to hunter, tracking down and killing the person who had marked them for death. It was the only way to void the binding contract of the Black Sacrament once it was made, while still paying a blood price to Sithis. As the embodiment of the Void, Sithis did not care who died, as long as they were slaughtered in His name.

 

Bricca ventured off the road, making her way through the forest. A narrow track had been made by the regular passings of Sanctuary members, but everyone in Falkreath knew to avoid the Nordic ruin that housed the Sanctuary itself. A few hundred years ago, when the Dark Brotherhood first settled here, the tale was spread that the place was haunted by the ghosts of the graveyard. Since then, it had become a piece of folklore that had started to live its own life. Many citizens would swear that they heard strange noises coming from the ruin at night: screeches and howling laughter. Sometimes they would refer to the ghostly lights the second cousin of their best fried had come across after spending a long night in the inn. The last person who had actually entered the ruin without permission had been a stuck-up writer from High Rock, who ended up as dinner for Babette's pet spider.

 

The Sanctuary was quiet today. On any given moment about half of the people who lived there were actually at home, the other half away on a contract of some sorts. Bricca headed for her room to unpack her luggage and when she was done she went around, searching for Astrid. She found the matron in the dining room, talking contracts with the Redguard Nazir and furtively sending disturbed glares at the nearby Cicero. Bricca passed the mad jester when she made her way towards Astrid and glanced over his shoulder. He was writing in some sort of journal: pages scrawled full in a spiky handwriting. At the moment he was working on a drawing of an impaled woman with a grotesquely distorted face, minutely adding detail with his tongue sticking out between his lips, his brow furrowed in concentration.

 

Bricca lowered the pouch on the table. “Thirty-nine septims and a bunch of silver. I've traded in one of them for lodgings along the way.

 

Astrid smiled. “I trust the contract went well?” The matron reached for the purse and emptied it, and then she reached out and counted out three of the small golden coins which she handed back to Bricca. She gestured at one of the chairs. “Come sit with us and tell us about your contract. Who did you have to kill?”

 

The next two weeks would have passed without anything particularly interesting, but when Bricca returned to the Sanctuary one night after feeding in Falkreath she heard angry voices and shouting. As it turned out, Cicero had succeeded in pushing Nazir over the edge with his constant nagging. The usually so composed Redguard had traded in his sarcasm for his fists. Arnbjorn had just managed to pull the two away from each other when Bricca walked in on the scene. Nazir was breathing heavily, trying to pull himself together. Cicero had managed to stand up, shaking, his face bruised and bloodied and his jester's cap torn, but the high-pitched laugh he uttered caused a chill to run down Bricca's spine. His grin, slightly malformed thanks to a split lip, was mocking and full of triumph.

 

When the dust had settled slightly the next day Astrid pulled Bricca aside.

 

“I need your help in a quite personal matter,” the blonde Nord said, looking Bricca in the eye, before sighing and rubbing her temples.

 

“Cicero?” Bricca asked, leaning back in her chair. Astrid glanced around warily, as if the jester was hiding nearby, and then nodded.

 

“Something needs to happen. If we continue on this track, Cicero will end up tearing the Sanctuary apart. He – well, you've seen it. He attempts to ingratiate himself with half of us and quietly torments the rest. The incident with Nazir yesterday wasn't the only one in the past month.”

 

Bricca nodded, thinking about Astrids words. The core of the issue was the Night Mother. Under Astrid's leadership, the Dark Brotherhood did not hold true to those old beliefs and values any more. Some individual members still did, of course, but others were either dismissive or simply indifferent. Cicero seemed to take those last things as the greatest personal insult one could have given him.

 

“I had not expected Nazir to snap like that,” she said to Astrid. “What did Cicero do to gain such a reaction?”

 

Astrid grunted. “The same he does with Veezara and Veryn. He fishes for scraps of their past and then starts digging up memories. It's a cruel thing to do. You don't know it, but Nazir...” She sighed again, looking as tired and weary as she sounded. “I don't usually tell people this, but Nazir was about sixteen years old when the Great War started. He joined the guerilla in Hammerfell, waging war from the desert. I am quite certain that he has seen more people die than everyone in this Sanctuary combined. For Nazir, the war never quite ended, but instead of turning to the bottle he joined the Dark Brotherhood and kept killing.”

 

Bricca grimaced. She liked Nazir a lot. “I didn't know. Why does Cicero do this?”

 

Astrid pursed her lips. “I fear Cicero is planning a betrayal.”

 

Bricca jerked her head up in surprise. “ _What?_ ”

 

“He keeps locking himself in the Night Mothers chamber. Sithis knows what he is doing there, but we hear him talking. Talking to someone he might be meeting with in secret with the intention of bringing down the Dark Brotherhood.”

 

Now Astrid was leaping to too many conclusions at once. Bricca frowned slightly.

 

“Astrid, it is Cicero we are talking about. Isn't it most probable that he just talks to himself?”

 

Astrid shook her head. “My gut tells me something is going on.”

 

Bricca did not answer immediately. She looked at Astrids slim hands that lay on the table. Her fingers were slender for a Nord. They could have been the fingers of a harpsichord player instead of an assassin. Her nails however were ugly and bitten short. Astrid must be nervous, worried or both. Bricca decided to give her the benefit of doubt.

 

“What would you have us do about it?”

 

Astrid looked uncomfortable, which was something she rarely did. “I wouldn't have asked this of you if I didn't see the utmost need, Bricca. I need someone to listen in on him.”

 

“I could do that.”

 

The other woman smiled nervously and shifted in her seat. “The thing is that there is only one spot to hide in that room, and that is inside the Night Mothers coffin.”

 

Bricca blinked slowly, her thoughts reeling. “That's sacrilege,” she said at last, still shocked by Astrids suggestion. At least the matron had the decency to blush.

 

“Bricca, please... It's the only way to know for sure that Cicero is not scheming behind our backs. You are the only one whom I trust to do this that's also able to bring this to a good end. Cicero dotes on you, so even if you get caught he won't mind. We cannot let him betray the Dark Brotherhood!”

 

The only time Bricca had seen Astrid this distraught had been a few years ago, when a long-time member and close friend of hers had been killed on the job.

 

“You care about this Sanctuary, don't you?” Astrid whispered.

 

“Of course I do, Astrid, but defiling the Night Mother's remains is something which goes against all my principles.”

 

Something hardened in Astrid's face, a flicker of distrust passing over her features. When Bricca had just rejoined the Dark Brotherhood Astrid had regarded her very coolly. The matron had been afraid that Bricca would use her former position as a member of the Black Hand to claim a form of leadership. Only once Bricca had made abundantly clear that she was not interested did Astrid come down from her initial position. Right now, Bricca feared that Astrid would fall back into that behaviour again, especially if she flat out refused. Smiling disarmingly, she tried to give her voice a reasonable tone.

 

“I'm only voicing some of my concerns. The Night Mother means a lot to me and I regard her body as our most sacred relic. In light of Cicero's recent behaviour I might be able to put those concerns aside though. Our family here means a great deal to me.”

 

Yes, the Night Mother might be an embalmed corpse, but most of all she was the Bride of Sithis: a spiritual entity. Her corpse was a mere symbol of her existence. Despite Cicero's apparent infatuation and reverence for the Night Mother she was not yet convinced where the repulsive little jester's true allegiance was lying. Was he merely playing an elaborate game with the Sanctuary at stake?

 

“Fine,” she said at last, looking Astrid directly in the eye. It was time to make the best of it. “I'll do it but on one condition. I want Shadowmere.”


	4. Stay Awhile and Listen

**Chapter IV**

 

**_Stay Awhile and Listen_ **

 

* * *

 

Shadowmere. An immortal horse of Daedric origin that preferred to eat meat and the flesh of her enemies. She'd be a powerful ally and it surprised Bricca that Astrid would give up the horse so soon and easily. Then again, the matron did not ride her often and always was skittish around the beast. Perhaps Shadowmere was too tangible a part of the spiritual side of the Brotherhood that Astrid liked to forget about. All Bricca had to do was break into the Night Mother's coffin and hide among Her remains, defiling them with her very presence. A transgression like that would not be easily forgiven by the Night Mother, but neither would Cicero's possible plan of an uprising.

Bricca left her room very early in the morning. All of the others were soundly asleep by now, as the new year had come to pass tonight. It had been celebrated by a lot of food and drink, in which everyone but Cicero had taken part. Only Babette was still awake, but Bricca had shaken off the girl by telling her she was going to take a long walk outside. Instead of heading for the Black Door, she turned into a small corridor that led to the room housing the Night Mother's coffin. Despite the spider webs still clinging to the earthen ceiling, Cicero had cleaned up much of the debris and junk that had been in the room before, when it was only used for storage.

The Night Mother's coffin was made of heavy iron, placed on a raised stone slab in front of a dirty stained glass window that depicted Sithis Himself. Cicero had scrubbed the floor and placed candles in a circle around the slab, which had already melted down to little stumps. Lots of wildflowers lay scattered around, masking a thick and pungent smell. Some of the flowers were bound in bundles and a large wreath covered the steps towards the coffin. The whole place breathed something like sanctity, courtesy of the dutiful care of the jester. Careful not to crush any of the flowers, Bricca tiptoed towards the coffin. Everything was going to be all right. She'd hide in here, listen to Cicero chatter to himself, and pop out once he left. It was better not to think of the alternative, the one where Cicero discovered her and made a big scene. At least the hinges on the coffin were oiled already and allowed her to open it silently. The pungent smell suddenly couldn't be masked any more by the flowers. It wafted forth from the mummified corpse inside and burned her nostrils. Bricca suppressed a cough, scuffling around as she backed into the coffin, wondering what Cicero had to do to keep the corpse behind her in a somewhat representable state. Shelves on the nearby wall held some large bottles, all labelled in the jester's spidery writing, containing embalming fluid. She remembered Cicero's instructions that nobody was to touch them under any circumstances, lest the precious fluid be spilled or wasted. In complete disregard of all his warnings, she knew that Veryn and Babette had nicked a bottle not long after the jester had arrived to use for their own experiments.

It was hard trying not to touch the Night Mother's body, leaving Bricca to fidget around, but once she shut the coffin she had to take a few steps back. The dried out hands, almost claws, of the Night Mother nudged her back as she peered through a tiny crack between the lids, a thin trickle of light allowing her to see the contours of the room. The time to wait had begun.

In the distance she heard the faint rushing of the small waterfall. Arnbjorn's hammer suddenly started to make soft thunks and thuds on his anvil. Eventually she heard people say good morning to each other, their voices far away, and then, finally, someone started humming nearby. Cicero had arrived.

The Jester was talking to himself, muttering under his breath. Bricca could only hear one pair of feet softly hitting the floor, and only the beating of one heart. In the end, she probably had been right where Astrid was mistaken: the mad Cicero was merely talking to himself. Then, without warning, Cicero started yelling. Bricca took a step back in surprise, the corpse behind her clanging awfully loud against the back of the coffin. For a second she feared that Cicero had heard it, but he was too busy making noise by himself.

"The others... I've spoken to them. And they're coming around, I know it. The vampire who served us since old, the wizard Festus Krex... perhaps even the Argonian and the Un-child. But what about you? Have you... have you spoken to anyone? No... No, of course not. I do the talking, the stalking, the seeing and saying."

Now this was becoming interesting. Bricca was convinced there wasn't a second person in the room at all, but Cicero's words reeked of a will to change some things around in the Dark Brotherhood, and she wasn't entirely convinced that was a bad idea. She heard the jester take a deep breath. With nobody else around she had gotten an inkling of whom the madman was talking to.

"And what do you do? NOTHING! Not... not that I'm angry! No, never! Cicero understands. Heh. Cicero always understands... and obeys."

The manic screaming stopped as sudden as it had begun and it almost seemed to Bricca that Cicero had started to cry instead. It was actually pretty sad. The man was so alienated from the rest of the Sanctuary that he resorted to talking with a corpse. Even if no one here had accepted _her_ , she would never sink that low.

"You will talk when you're ready, won't you... won't you – _sweet Night Mother?_ "

Bricca could picture him in her mind, kneeling in front of the coffin with teared up eyes, wringing his hands together while he begged for someone to talk to him.

" _Poor Cicero_." This time it was Bricca who clanged against the coffin in fright. That voice did not come from somewhere outside, but rather from inside her head. Her stomach lurched at the mere thought of a supernatural something hiding in her mind. " _Dear Cicero_ ", the voice continued. Its tone was low and rasping, but not like that of the Dark Elves. No, to Bricca it sounded as if it belonged to something long dead and rotten that had just crawled out of one of Morthal's many sludge fens. " _Such a humble servant, but he will never hear my voice, for he is not the Listener._ "

Outside, Cicero bristled on, his pleas falling on deaf ears. Inside the coffin, Bricca started to fear the worst. " _What are you?_ " she thought back, quietly whispering the words under her breath. The voice laughed, raising the hairs on her arms on end.

" _I speak. I weave. And now I speak to you, who shares my iron tomb, to give you my task. Journey to Volunruud and speak with Amaund Motierre,_ " the voice rasped. Cicero's pitiful sniffling penetrated the coffin and momentarily drowned out the Night Mother. " _Tell Cicero the time has come. Tell him the words he has been waiting for all these years: Darkness rises when silence dies._ "

Then, all of a sudden, it was silent again, the haunting voice disappearing into the Void. Bricca's thoughts were reeling. That voice, speaking in her mind, had it truly been the Night Mother, or was she going insane? Perhaps someone was playing an elaborate joke on her, but that was a thought she quickly discarded. No one in the Dark Brotherhood would dare to incur the Wrath of Sithis by misusing the Night Mother in such a way, even if they no longer abided by Her tenets. She also quite doubted she had gone mad, which left only one option: the Unholy Matron had truly named her Listener. Bricca was used to unlikely things happening. She had been there when the Oblivion crisis had taken place, her lover at that time rising to become the Champion of Cyrodiil. He had been in the Dark Brotherhood too, and in those years the Night Mother had spoken to _him_ as well. She had named him as Her Listener during some strange events that had taken place in the _sancta sanctorum_ : Her Crypt in Bravil.

Strange things always seemed to happen to Bricca and the people around her, as if she was a lantern and they were moths, attracting change wherever she went. And hadn't there been those great changes in the last few years? The Great War had ended up driving her back into the arms of the Dark Brotherhood, and most recently the dragons had returned. More than a year ago the town of Helgen had been sacked in its entirety by a large, black, flying lizard, the first to be seen in centuries. There had always been rumours of course, of a dragon serving Nulfaga of Daggerfall two hundred years ago, and hadn't she seen Martin Septim turn into a great golden dragon with her own eyes? But this black dragon was very real and very dangerous, and the people of Skyrim spoke of more dragons rising from the earth. If wild dragons turned out to exist after all, and there were people like Veryn who could use their magic, it wasn't that much of a stretch to believe that the Night Mother had finally broken Her silence. Strange events never happened entirely on their own, despite how strange or impossible they seemed to be at first.

Then, without Bricca reaching out for them, the lids to the coffin suddenly burst open as if they had a will of their own. Bricca found herself standing face to face with an incredulous Cicero. Like a jack-in-the-box, the Jester launched himself upwards, jumping at her with two daggers at the ready.

"What treachery! Defiler! Debaser and defiler! You have violated the sanctity of the Night Mother's coffin! Die, you filthy whore! I'll have you scream!" Cicero's voice skipped over as he screeched in her face, wildly swinging his daggers. Bricca dodged out of his way immediately, but the point of one of the blades nicked her leg. She cursed and reached for her boot knife, circling around the Jester. Cicero pirouetted at the spot and then tumbled through the air like a street acrobat, landing softly on his feet behind her. Bricca waited for half a second, hoping to lull him into a false sense of security and between the moment he lunged at her with his daggers and the moment they would have reached her back she spun around and rammed her knee between Cicero's legs. The daggers went awry and the jester buckled over. With her forehead Bricca collided with his nose and she felt a satisfying crunch as it broke. Then she grabbed Cicero's wrist and twisted it until the jester dropped one blade. With her own knife she reached out towards his throat, pressing the blade against his flesh.

"You want to hear me scream because Mother is silent to you?" she hissed in Cicero's ear, glaring warily at the door. The other Sanctuary members stormed inside in alarm, staring wide-eyed at what was going on: Nazir, scowling, Festus who for once had discarded his book, and Gabriella looking worried.

"What is going on?"

Collectively everyone looked at Astrid who had entered last. Her tone was brusque and she did not look happy. Not at all.

"That bitch! That whoreborn wench! She defiled the Night Mother! What she did is unthinkable!" Cicero's voice was rising higher and higher. "Oh Mother! Cast down thy wrath on the unbelievers! Bathe them in the blood of-"

"Enough!" Astrid snapped, sending a pointed glare at Bricca. It was clear to her what the matron meant. She was on her own here. Even if Bricca told on Astrid's plan in front of everyone, they wouldn't believe her. She scoffed. Instead, she was going to tell them something even more incredulous. Slowly she removed the knife from Cicero's throat, ready to break the news of the Night Mothers reawakening. She had hoped to tell them in a different manner, maybe talk it over with Astrid first, but this had to do.

"Yes", Bricca said, trying to keep her tone as casual as possible. "I did visit the Night Mother in her coffin." She managed to let it sound as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do.

"Why, in the name of Sithis and all that is unholy, would you do something like that?" Gabriella's slanted red eyes flared up as if they were burning coals. Bricca rolled her shoulders, forcing a smile. Her thigh hurt where Cicero had nicked it and she still was trying to come to terms with a ghostly semi-divine entity talking in her head. She had to keep up the appearance that she was entirely unfazed by all that however, in order to lend credibility to her words.

"Actually," she continued, "it was less my doing as well as Her bidding. You see, the Night Mother called me to Her, and named me as Her Listener." Her smile grew slightly when she took in the shocked, incredulous expressions of her fellow Brothers and Sisters.

"Liar!" Cicero bellowed, his puffy face contorting in rage. He attempted to launch himself at her again, but Nazir and Gabriella stepped in on time to restrain him. His spittle mixed with the blood still streaming from his nose dripped in a gooey red mess on the ground. "She only speaks to the Listener, and there is _NO_ Listener!" The shriek he let out was ear-splitting.

"The Night Mother said she thought you served her well, Cicero, and that there were some words you might be interested in. _Darkness rises as Silence dies._ " Bricca hoped the words sounded solemn enough. It was hard not to burst out in a fit of nervous giggling, so absurd was this whole situation. Cicero was staring at her incredulously as if he could hardly believe what he had just heard, and then, to the great amazement of everyone, the jester burst out in laughing and dancing. The world had definitely gone insane, Bricca thought to herself.

"Enough of this!", Astrid hissed. With her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed her face was the epitome of annoyance and anger. "What is the meaning of all this?" She pointed at Cicero, jabbing her fingers in the jesters chest. "What is so important about those words?"

Cicero made a backwards somersault to escape the prodding, causing the little bells at the points of his cap to tingle softly. When he landed on both feet again he grinned at Astrid.

"They are the Binding Words! Written down ages ago in the Keeping Tomes. Cicero has been a good Keeper, and Cicero brought with him what is left of them, if the matron wants to read. They are the signal so I would know... Mothers only way of talking to sweet Cicero..."

Astrid seemed entirely lost with the situation. She looked from one to another of the assassins gathered in the room, clearly noticing the looks of suspicion mixed with awe that Gabriella and Festus gave Bricca. With her teeth clenched, the matron spun around.

"You're all dismissed. Bricca, I want to talk to you tonight, immediately after dinner. I need some time to think this over right now."

Hours later, Bricca was seated opposite Astrid again, listening to the matron's complains.

"I am not happy with this. This was not supposed to happen. By Sithis, I'd almost would think you were conspiring with Cicero behind my back if you hadn't been away on your contract."

"That's a bit harsh, don't you think?" Bricca plucked at a few stray locks of hair. She had spent the day trying to read the ancient Keeping Tomes Cicero had brought with him. They contained centuries of Dark Brotherhood lore, but reading them was though and slow. "Astrid, this is coming as a huge and not entirely pleasant surprise to me as well. I am named Listener, out of the blue, and I somehow have to try and make it work. Oh, and I have the voice of a dead woman in my head." It sounded a bit more acerbic than Bricca had meant it, but it managed to shut Astrid up.

"What did the Night Mother say to you?" the matron asked eventually while pouring herself a glass of ale.

"She didn't say as much as I'd have liked her to say, but She wants me to find a man named Amaund Motierre in Volunruud. I suppose you would like me to go after him?"

Astrid grunted when she answered, sounding piqued. "Listen, Bricca. I don't know what is going on here, but you still take your orders from me, and I don't want you to go after Motierre yet. I think, in fact, that it might be better if we part ways for a while. I have a contract for you. It is not a quick one, nor is it easy or entirely what you're used to. You see, I've been corresponding for a while with someone who is affiliated with the College of Winterhold. You will go there and infiltrate the place while carrying out the orders of my contact."

Bricca frowned, glaring at Astrid with repugnance. "I'm not a mage. Why don't you send Festus or Veryn? Because you want to get rid of me?"

"Because Festus has been banished from the College after a series of unfortunate incidents involving his students and various gruesome deaths. And secondly, because my contact belongs to the Thalmor, so I cannot send Veryn either." Astrid smirked slightly. "And I want you because you were born as minor nobility and can play the part. To get into the College requires a certain kind of... class."

Bricca's frown deepened meanwhile. "Why doesn't he ask his own assassins? The Thalmor have those and they seem quite effective if you count all those dead worshippers of Talos."

"Ancano wants to keep his project a secret. The Thalmor have a tendency to stab each other in the back in order to take credit for the accomplishments of someone else. To avoid that he has asked us to do his bidding. You are a Breton, your innate magic abilities should be enough to fool them for the duration of your stay there." Astrid looked Bricca in the eye. "There will be enough people around for you to feed on. I will give you the paperwork that will guarantee your entry. You'll be enrolled under a false name, obviously. You will be a young widowed Breton noblewoman who now wishes to spend the remainder of her life studying magic, away from the busy cities of High Rock. As I promised, you may take Shadowmere from her stables. Don't fail me or Ancano, Bricca. You've seen the result of angering the Thalmor with one of your Dark Brothers."

* * *

Until seventy-five years ago the city of Winterhold was the largest city in the north-east of Skyrim, easily dwarfing Windhelm and rivalling even Solitude. But then, in 122, an unimaginable disaster took place. For years after the eruption of Red Mountain large storms battered the coast of Skyrim, until in that fateful year an aftershock of the volcano caused a storm surge to beat at the steep rocky cliffs. All along the coast small fishing villages were washed away. The cliffs of Winterhold broke away as well, collapsing into the sea and taking most of the city with them. In one night, more than half of the population of the city had died. In the following years many of the survivors moved away, to Windhelm or Dawnstar in order to leave this doomed place and their dead family members behind.

Today, Winterhold counted less than five thousand souls. The buildings were eclectic, composed from the ruined fragments of what once had been a magnificent city. Stone and wood alternated and everything was covered by a thick layer of snow. Even in summer, only a few species of wheat grew in this cold. Bricca came across farms that had planted nothing but endless rows of snowberries: small spots of red dotting the otherwise bleak landscape. Large, flat areas of concrete were spread throughout the city, the foundations of what once had been temples or market halls. Now they housed wooden frames with the spread out hides of horkers and giant elk. Near the cliffs, some buildings abruptly ended as if they were split in two, and others precariously protruded over the edge. Down below there was a small harbour, filled with fishing ships that lay frozen in the ice. The local hunters, almost specks in the distance, dragged forth large sledges with more carcasses tied to them. Even Falkreath Hold, with its isolated farms and lumber mills, had more grandeur than this. The only exception to the desolateness of city was the College. Rising high on a roughly circular piece of cliff that stood freely in the sea it towered over Winterhold. Small arched bridges connected it to the main land, held up above the abyss by sheer magic. The place was impressive to see, an ages old fortress of magic crowning the frozen sea.

Early the following morning, Bricca started the long walk towards the college. She had left Shadowmere at the local stables, where the stable hand had ensured her the horse would be well cared for. Behind her, a lanky Nord boy followed, carrying some of her luggage. Bricca hauled the rest herself, looking forward to settling down at the College for a while. She didn't speak much, although the boy had many, many questions. It was a rare opportunity for him to find out something about the world beyond his town, a world he would probably never come to explore. Maybe he would visit Windhelm once, or perhaps join the Stormcloak Rebellion, but he would never come to see the White Gold Tower of the Imperial City or the breathtaking mosques of Hammerfell. Beyond the gates of the College lay a large, circular courtyard. In the middle stood a statue of a mage, his arms spread wide and his head tilted back as if he was casting, and at its feet was a magicka well. Small groups of students sat on the edge, conversing with each other. Others hurried across the courtyard, carrying books or scrolls, the fine snow under their feet turned into one thick, compacted layer. The main thing about the place that struck Bricca was its relative lack of colour. The light grey stone, coupled with the white snow covering almost everything, gave a serene look to the College. The Nord boy looked around in wonder, gaping at the towering buildings. Bricca herself looked around as well, but she was trying to find someone who could tell her where to go. She ended up asking a nearby Khajiit. The giant cat twitched his whiskers slightly and smiled at her.

"How can J'zargo help the nice lady?"

Bricca smiled back at him. "Could you please tell me where I can find Mirabelle Ervine?"

Mirabelle Ervine turned out to be a fellow Breton with a slightly stingy face and thin lips. She took Bricca in quietly and then looked over the paperwork with a slight frown, reading everything closely.

"Everything seems to be in order," she said finally. "Welcome to the College of Winterhold. Please follow me so I can show you around the grounds."

A few days later, Bricca was sitting at her desk in the Hall of Attainment. The Hall was actually more of a tower, large and circular, with the student bedrooms in its outer circle. The rooms were small and sober, with a bed, a desk and a wardrobe, but not much more. A stack of books lay nearby. Mirabelle had said that everyone at the college was free to pursue such research as they wanted, and thus Bricca had fetched some literature on genealogy the day before. _Famous Families of Greater Betony_ and _Nature's Nobility: A Breton Genealogy_ had given her the information on Amaund Motierre she had been wondering about. The name had sounded familiar to her. It was no surprise that it did, because the Motierres had been one of the first Breton families to take a seat in the Elder Council. They were rich, powerful and influential, and apparently one of them now wished to contact the Dark Brotherhood. It was beyond interesting to think of what they could have offered, but Astrid had to throw the spanner into the works. The Five Tenets forbade Bricca to disregard the orders from a superior, and so she was stuck here at the College. Suspiciously she peered at the sealed scroll that had suddenly appeared in her room after she had returned from an Alteration lecture given by an old man that went by the name of Tolfdir. It was made of thick parchment and sealed with dark blue wax, stamped with the sign of the Thalmor. Clearly, Ancano knew about her presence in the College now, and as she expected the letter summoned her to his office at night.

A monotone voice told her to come inside when she knocked on Ancano's door. The voice belonged to a bored and haughty looking Altmer. With his smooth golden skin and high arched eyebrows he looked every other of his kind. His hair was thin and white, slicked back so it stuck to his skull. He stared at Bricca, his eyes a pale, gleaming amber in colour.

"Sit down."

Bricca complied, smoothing her College robes as she sat down. She looked around Ancano's office with slight interest. It was as sober as any other room in the college, but on the wall opposite her hung a clock. The dial was painted, adorned with birds and flowing, High Elven, patterns, but the gears and thin chains that formed the clockwork itself were distinctly Dwarven. Mechanical clocks had been around for a long time, and clockmakers made good use of the left over Dwarven technology to adapt it for their own work. Bricca knew that the most fancy of those did not only give the hour, but also the current month and constellation. In one corner stood a heap of luggage, carefully stacked. Clearly Ancano had only arrived at the College recently.

"So you are the assassin?"

Bricca nodded. "I am."

"Very well." Ancano folded his hands on his desk, looking down on her. "I assume you would like to know exactly why I hired your organization, instead of solving the problem myself. My colleagues unfortunately do not understand my need for utmost secrecy when it comes to my personal projects at the College, which is where you come in. As a trained assassin I expect you to know what you are doing, without incriminating yourself or me. I expect full confidentiality."

He glared at her with narrowed eyes. Bricca stared back and nodded. "I understand completely. The Dark Brotherhood has kept confidentiality since its very beginning."

Ancano had spoken only a few words to her, and already she felt an intense dislike for the man, his arrogant manners and his awful pattern of speech. Rather than hiding his accent, Ancano drew it out heavily, making his Imperial hard to understand. The way he spoke it, it sounded as if the tongue was far beneath him, only useful for communicating with the lesser races.

"Let us see to the task at hand," the Thalmor drawled. Even here at the College he wore the grey leather coat of his order, adorned with golden decorations. "What I want you to do is to kill an inhabitant of the College over the course of the next few months. I want you to do this slowly, so it might look like an accident or an illness that will take him to the other side. I will even be so kind as to warn you that the men I wish dead is well-versed with magic and can be very dangerous, would he find out you were sent to kill him." Ancano smiled, but his eyes stayed narrowed. "Obviously, I would not like him finding out either."

"I can assure you that the Dark Brotherhood will deliver its usual quality," Bricca answered, trying to keep up a professional appearance and not let any of her distaste show through. "Now if you don't mind, could you please elaborate on the target?"

Ancano gave a barely noticeable nod. "Of course. You are to kill the Archmage himself. He is a Dunmer who goes by the name of Savos Aren. He is a very respectable member of the local community here at Winterhold. You will have to find a way to get close to him without attracting suspicion." The Thalmor permitted himself a little smile. "I also would like you to find out what one of his protégées is doing here. You will, of course, be paid for the extra work. Oh, don't look at me like that. I know you are a murderer and not a spy, but if you don't do this I will be _very disappointed_."

He gave a little wink that made Bricca's stomach churn.

"The protégée is a Dunmer as well. His name is Veryn Uvirith and you will be able to recognize him easily by his marred face. I want to know why he has returned to the College and what he has to do with the artefact we have here. It should be easy for you to listen in to conversations here and there, to pick up the little talk in the corridors. It won't cost you much of your time and I will pay you richly for it. And if not..." He sighed dramatically. "Well, you wouldn't want anything to happen to your little Sanctuary in the south-west of this pitiful province, do you?"


	5. Chamber of Secrets

**Chapter V**

 

**_Chamber of Secrets_ **

 

* * *

A dragon was soaring through the air far off in the distance, a dark speck against the snow-covered mountains of northern Skyrim. Its shrill cries echoed throughout the area, reverberating against the peaks and carrying onwards through the valleys. Veryn held in the reins of his horse and peered in the distance, brushing his hair out of his face. It was finally growing longer again after Astrid had to cut most of it off a year ago. Even though the dragon flew far away, it was large enough to be seen with the naked eye. It was becoming a common occurrence nowadays to see them pass by, but Veryn never ceased to be impressed.

 

It was nearing the end of Sun's Dusk. After he had left Markarth Veryn had been back at the Falkreath Sanctuary for a few days. Cicero's incessant questioning had driven him away not long after he had arrived.

 

" _Mother never abandons her children_ ," the Jester had simpered. " _Why do you still follow a Daedra when she has forsaken you?_ "

 

Veryn tightened his grip on the reins until pain flared through his finger joints. To be fair, Astrid had apologized about the Jester's behaviour, but she had also said that there was nothing she could do about Cicero until he actually started attacking or murdering fellow Dark Brotherhood members. Now he was on his way to Winterhold, to the Mages College, while Astrid still had the illusion he was merely retreating to his home in Whiterun. He had been with the College for decades, doing research and occasionally teaching classes in Magical Theory and Arcane Physics. Within Skyrim, the College used to be his home, more so than Whiterun or even the Sanctuary could ever be.

 

When he arrived there a few days later the courtyard of the College was in turmoil. A great deal of people was busying themselves around the main tower. Some of them seemed to be clearing out the Hall of the Elements, lugging around chairs and tables, and others were just standing around, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

 

"What _is_ going on?" he asked Mirabelle, who was attempting to control the chaos. The woman spun around, lips drawn as tight as the string of a bow. Annoyance seemed to be dripping out of every pore on her skin.

 

"That's none of your business, sir - Divines!"

 

Veryn gritted his teeth as she studied his face for far too long. Mirabelle's expression was alternating between disgust, fear and pity, before she settled on just gaping stupidly at him. He felt his cheeks burn in embarrassment, especially when some of the bystanders started looking as well.

 

" _Lord Uvirith_ ," Mirabelle said at last, her voice almost a whisper. "So the rumours, they are true? That you are the Dragonborn, and that you were at Helgen and later captured by the Thalmor?"

 

Veryn was unable to suppress a wince when she mentioned the latter.

 

"Yes." he said at last, forcing the words out of his throat. "It's true. But well -” He coughed and scratched his temple. “I'm here now. It's good to see you too.”

 

He had not been at the College for over a year. He had intended to go there earlier, but first the dragons had absorbed his time and after what happened with the Thalmor he had decided to lay low for a long while. Meanwhile, Mirabelle kept asking questions. Veryn answered some of them absently, hoping she would cut her barrage short. He longed to be in the silence of his rooms and to get rid of his heavy clothes. The thick layers of fur, wool and leather offered excellent protection against the biting cold, but after riding from one side of Skyrim to the other, they were filthy and smelled of horse, smoke and sweat. He was saved by a lot of noise and agitated chatting coming from the main gates, which were opening to show a bizarre procession of mages levitating a wooden platform. Upon it, an enormous globe, crudely covered in cloth, was secured with hooks and ropes. The globe looked like it could fall off every moment, especially as the platform swayed in the air, tilting from left to right and back. Someone shouted to keep the thing steady, which was followed by the loud noise of splintering wood as the platform crashed to the ground. Sensing a new opportunity to boss around, Mirabelle left Veryn to his own and hastened herself to the newly arrived mages. They wore thick furs too, their woollen cloaks embroidered with the insignia of the College, and most of them were now stomping their feet and huddled around conjured fire in an effort to get warm.

 

It was easy to get away from the noise once the artefact had arrived. Avoiding most of the other mages for now, Veryn made his way to the bathing rooms. Many of the students and researches he passed were too absorbed in their work to notice him at all. In one corridor he stumbled upon Arniel Gale, who usually busied himself with the connection between magicka and Dwemer technology. Today was no exception: in one hand the man held a tattered piece of parchment and in the other some sort of metal puzzle he was trying to solve.

 

"Oh, were you gone?" Gale asked after bumping into him, not bothering to look up from his puzzle for even a second. "Hey – did you do something with your hair?"

 

Sleep always was hard to come by. Every couple of hours Veryn woke up, drenched in sweat and with the faint images of Northwatch Keep lingering before his eyes, his head pounding. After the fourth time it happened he decided to give up on sleeping all together. He conjured a small ball of magelight to drive the darkness away and tried to clear his mind. It took a few minutes to banish the recurring thoughts of the Thalmor and realize that he was just in his own room in Winterhold. _Azura. Why?_ He shook his head and rubbed his right eye. It was acting up again. The damn pain was always there, sometimes faint, sometimes like this. He stood up reluctantly, feeling as if something was stabbing the inside of his skull over and over. He staggered over to his desk, shivering when his feet touched the cold stone floor and poured a cup of water. After, he reached for a leather pouch he'd carelessly thrown there the evening before. He took two lumps of moon sugar from it, small and crystal-like, and added them to the drink, twirling the cup until they slowly dissolved. It tasted awful when he drank it, sickening sweet. He put the cup away again and then sat back on the edge of the bed, waiting for the drug to take effect, cradling his head in his hands while he hoped the pain would end soon.

 

After an hour he gave up, the pain dulled only partly and took a walk. Even in the middle of the night the halls of the Mages College weren't abandoned. A group of people was still working in the Hall of the Elements, gathered in front of the artefact that had arrived earlier that day. It was uncovered now and hovered above the large magicka well in the middle of the Hall. Veryn walked near it, observing it with amazement. The orb seemed made of a dark green marble, but when he touched it he felt that its surface was more like a dull metal, unlike any he had seen before. Deep grooves cut through the metal, forming circles and ellipses, with symbols, runes and a flowing script carved in it as well. Thinner lines portrayed celestial maps, glowing blue with raw magicka. A low, humming sound seemed to come from deep within it and Veryn shivered from the sheer amount of magicka it seemed to be processing.

 

"Remarkable, isn't it?" a voice said to his right. "We call it the Eye of Magnus, after the runes. They closely resemble the script used by Magnus in his writings."

 

"Tolfdir. It's good to see you," Veryn said as he turned to face the man who had spoken. Tolfdir was a very old human, far in his nineties, who had been with the College for longer than almost everyone else. "Where did you find this?" He gestured at the sphere, captivated, in awe. “I've never seen anything like this before. It's astonishing!”

 

Tolfdir smiled, quietly taking in Veryns looks before turning back to look at the Eye again. "A crew of students ran across it while we were digging at that excavation in Saarthal. Savos Aren insisted on bringing it here, so we could find out what it is and what it does."

 

"You don't know anything yet?" Veryn looked at the Eye as well, which was slowly rotating above the magicka well. "How old is it? Does it have to do anything with the dragons returning?”

 

"We think it may date back to the Merethic Era, over five-thousand years ago, possibly even to before the Night of Tears. Some of us think it is as old as Magnus itself. Unfortunately, the records from that time are exceptionally vague, that is, if they even exist. Many of it is now regarded as myth, so we will have to delve in our archives and see what we can find. We haven't found any connection with the dragons yet, either. It is possible, but you'd have to search for it yourself."

 

Three weeks later, no one in the College had found much but obscure references in ancient books that might as well have been transcription errors, and thus people started to create their own theories. Some thought the Eye was a gateway to Aetherius, a sort of reverse Oblivion gate as it were. According to others it was very well possible that all of the Aurbis, the known universe and all of its planes, was contained within the Eye itself. Perhaps, instead, the Eye was a blueprint of Creation. Veryn didn't know what was true and what wasn't. He only knew that there was something irresistible in the Eye that kept pulling him towards it. Had had to know what the Eye was, but he had no luck so far. He also knew that when Tolfdir walked into the Hall of the Elements that morning the man came bearing bad news.

 

"I spoke to Savos Aren today," Tolfdir said. Carefully he moved a stack of books, clearing out a place to sit on the stone bench next to Veryn. Veryn marked the page in his own book with a piece of parchment and looked at the other man.

 

"Did Savos have anything useful to say?"

 

Tolfdirs expression fell.

 

"The Thalmor have inquired after the Eye and after you. They are sending a representative to the College. With the current political situation it was not possible for the Archmage to refuse. We would lose a large part of our private funding from the Imperial and Thalmor territories and -"

 

Veryn stopped listening to Tolfdirs continued ramblings about politics. After the man's words he suddenly felt nauseous and cold, as if he had forgotten to take any moon sugar. He raised his hand and touched the scars burned around his eye. _Elenwen._ She'd promised to take the other one too if he didn't do as he was told.

 

"Who's to say the Thalmor won't bring his friends with him? I'm a fugitive in their eyes."

Veryn put the book away and cursed, peering at Tolfdir from the corner of his left eye.

 

"Savos will be watching him like a hawk. And don't forget that Winterhold lies very deep into Stormcloak territory. There is no way a group of Thalmor can get by unnoticed. Savos thinks the only reason the Jarl permitted this representative to come to Winterhold is to thwart the College. Ever since the Great Collapse our relations with the Jarl's family have been strained."

 

Veryn wanted to answer Tolfdir, but his throat felt too dry to utter any words. He swallowed and rested his head on his knees. All too sudden the memories came back again. Someone throwing near-freezing sea water over his lashed-open back so he blacked out from the sudden sting. Small chains, the tails of a whip that ripped bits and pieces of his flesh away. His muscles cramping as he sat huddled in the cell, chained to the wall and unable to even lie down. He dug his nails in the palm of his hand, trying to push them through the cloth of his gloves, hoping to banish the thoughts away and focus on his surroundings. Tolfdir was looking at him, worry etched on his face. He seemed to be asking something, but Veryn was unable to process exactly what. As in a dream, he stood up and left Tolfdir behind. Perhaps it was all a dream, a hallucination brought on by the moon sugar.

 

"Veryn! Where are you going?"

 

"Away," he answered, his voice hoarse. "Before that _Thalmor_ comes here."

 

"Wait, please." Tolfdir sounded tired and frail, and almost as if he was begging. "You're panicking and making an overhasty decision! Come back here, we'll talk about it! I'm sure Savos will keep him in hand. _Veryn_?"

 

Veryn had intended to go straight to his rooms, but once he stepped out of the Hall, the world froze. Everything around him turned a faint blue in colour, and although he could move freely a nearby moth was caught in mid-flight, suspended in the air and unmoving.

 

"A Telvanni walking away from a great magical artefact. Every day seems to have a place for something new under the sun," a man said. Veryn jerked his head up, glaring at what turned out to be an Altmer, his breath immediately catching in his throat. The strange mer seemed to have a certain agelessness about him and his robes were cut in a fashion that looked like it might have been popular in some bygone Era. Although he did not look like a Thalmor at all, his clothing cream coloured and accented with red, Veryn took a few steps back and narrowed his eyes in distrust, reaching for a knife to be sure.

 

"Who are you?", he asked, his voice still quavering. _And how do you know I am part of House Telvanni?_ , he added in his mind. "Did you just freeze time?" From the corner of his eye he looked at the moth again. Its wings had not moved in the slightest, and around it particles of dust had stopped floating around.

 

The Altmer smiled in a nearly grandfatherly way. "I am Quaranir of the Psijic Order", he said. "I did not alter time, as only the Elder Scrolls are capable of that. I merely changed your perception of it."

 

Veryn crossed his arms. "What do you want?"

 

The Psijic sighed. "The Psijic Order does not usually intervene in the events that are about to happen. Right now, I am stretching the rules of my Order, because of this object you have here in the College. You call it the Eye and it is immensely powerful. This world is not ready for it."

 

"So? If you just said you don't intervene, why are you here then?"

 

"Because a chain of events has been set in motion. It started in Saarthal, when the Eye was discovered, and we cannot see where it will end, especially now it turns out that you are involved. You must stay at the College. As long as the Eye remains dormant, you will be safe here. Listen! Do you hear that? Footsteps! I must go now. Please, _please_ remain here. I will try to contact you as soon as possible."

 

The moment the door behind Veryn opened, Quaranir suddenly disappeared into thin air. Time unfroze immediately and the moth fluttered towards a nearby candle. It was almost as if the Psijic had never been here at all, leaving Veryn behind, bewildered and confused.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~  
  


_Kill the Archmage, and kill him slowly. It should look like an illness or a disease did the work._ It was easy for Ancano to demand that, but a lot less easy for Bricca to actually carry out. The only way that seemed to comply with Ancano's demands was to use a poison that would turn the Archmage into a weak, bedridden old man, with Ancano at his side to whisper the future of the College into his ears. If only Astrid had sent a real poisoner in Bricca's stead. Babette had perfected her skills in alchemy over the course of several decades, and she would know whether to use herbs or mushrooms, finely ground powder from exotic Black Marsh or the strange residue the people of Hammerfell called the tears of the poppy. But Babette looked like a ten year old child, with bright red eyes and long fangs added for good measure. The second best option would have been Festus, but the old man had been banished from the College after murdering some of his students and with a Thalmor involved it was impossible to send Veryn. _Except he was here._ There was no way in Oblivion Astrid could have known about that, and Bricca was not about to ask Veryn for his help in a Thalmor-led plot. Thus, in whatever spare time she had, Bricca searched the library, but none of the readily available books seemed to have exactly what Ancano was looking for.

 

Like the rest of the College, the library was a quiet and serene place. Officially, it was called the Arcaneum, and it had the odd trait that it seemed to be much larger on the inside. It was impossible for all those shelves to fit in, but somehow they did. That evening, she set out to hunt first. While Astrid had suggested there would be more than enough prey around, Bricca chose instead to sustain herself with animals. The rats and mice and occasional snow foxes did not taste like much, but going out for human blood would only cause suspicion. When she arrived at the Arcaneum afterwards, it was as good as deserted. The old Orcish librarian headed off to bed around midnight, and would be unable to see her take an unusual interest in deadly poisons. Unfortunately, it meant she could not ask him for help either when the Arcaneum shifted its books again. There were times when entire rows of bookcases flat out disappeared or switched places with other rows. Other times, shelves flickered into existence depending on the time of the day or the position of the moons. As soon as she walked past the many tables, some newly revealed shelves held more books than she could ever hope to read. Bricca randomly picked the first five that seemed of interest and threw them at the nearest table. Once the morning came they might vanish again, so she had to read what she could in the few hours that she had. Many of the books were manuscripts, written in the Tiberian Minuscule, and reading them went very slowly. Some texts she discarded immediately, as they weren't written in Imperial at all, but others drew her interest. One heavy volume in particular was wonderfully illuminated, with colourful detailed drawings of the effects of some of the poisons it mentioned. Balmora's Bane turned its victims innards inside out. She read about Languorwine and Leper's Curse, until she stumbled upon something with the unimaginative name of Lungs Rot. Unfortunately, the ingredients it required were far out of her league to acquire: the fresh remains of a Nix-Hound, slaughtered with an ebony blade? Those beasts didn't even live here in Skyrim. Stalking Fade looked better. The poison would slowly work on the liver, causing the victim to die in agony after weeks of suffering. The picture next to the description showed a bright yellow human with a grotesquely swollen belly, clutching it in pain.

 

The ingredients for this poison were rare, but nothing outrageous. All Bricca had to do was listen into conversations and drop a few innocuous questions to learn from Colette Marence that the College kept its supplies underground, in a place called the Midden. It was a well kept secret within the College that the rock upon which the main towers were built was hollowed out, and contained countless storage rooms, secret hallways and hidden dungeons. It was in the Midden that the mages conducted their less savoury experiments. Necromancy and Daedric summoning all happened down below, as did the anatomical practices of those who studied restoration magic. Acquiring the key was easy enough as well. A shrewd little Wood Elf, named Enthir, prided himself in being able to acquire almost everything one could want. For the right price he sold highly illegal alchemical ingredients, smuggled in artefacts from far away countries and supplied moon sugar and skooma for thrice as much as you could get it for in Riften. Enthir sold keys to the Midden as well, like a baker sold bread, and soon Bricca was able to make her way down.

 

The Midden was chilly and dark. Many walls were covered with ice and shimmered when lit by her torch. Bricca passed rooms full of dead beasts: skeevers, wolves, sabre cats and more, all frozen stiff and buried half in the earth. Small wooden signs indicated what carcass was what and in many cases what disease the beast had carried with it. She had to visit four different storage rooms before she had everything the poison required and she was just wrapping a Daedra heart in a thick layer of cloth to stop it from oozing blood when she heard footsteps. They were very faint and masked by magic and any normal person would not have heard them, but it was clear to her that someone else was sneaking around here too. Bricca snuffed her torch and carefully put the heart in her bag. She pulled up her hood, tucking in some stray curls and made for the stairs. If she headed back now she could get some hours in on working at the poison. It was not long however before she noticed that the footsteps were coming closer. She and the other were walking towards each other. _Sithis, don't let it be Ancano._ She could not use the Thalmor grubbing around in her business right now, not at all. Moving with her back into a nearby niche, she tried to recognize who the other was, but the magic made it impossible to hear even a heartbeat. The only way she knew now that someone was near was the strange way the dim light that fell through the cracks in the ceiling was passing through the air. It was slightly off in one place, with the light bending at angles it shouldn't do. As she slowly, silently, drew her dagger, her foot hit a small pebble. It shot loose, ricocheting off the floor and the wall and making more noise than Bricca had thought possible. She cringed. Stupid. Now the other would know they weren't alone as well. The bent light was now nearly opposite her. Bricca stopped breathing and pressed herself against the wall to hide as far in the shadows as possible. To her relief, the other passed her, but then there was a sudden noise near her, a crack as loud as lightning hitting the ground. It lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough for Bricca to cover her ears and look up. For one second she saw a cloaked and hooded silhouette, and then everything exploded into pure white light. The flash engulfed her vision, and it was as if she had been staring directly into the sun. The light was so bright that it burned, like fire, and Bricca couldn't stop herself from crying out in pain and surprise. She felt tears run down her cheeks and bright spots were dancing in front of her eyes, flaring in and out of existence.

 

" _You._ What are you doing down here?" the silhouette asked, its gravelly voice sounding familiar. With the after-image of the flash still on her retina, Bricca squinted in the direction of the sound.

 

"Veryn?"

 

The elf grunted as he made himself fully visible. His hood and the darkness made it impossible to discern his features.

 

"What are you doing at the College?" he asked again.

 

"I'm working on a contract. Astrid sent me here." Bricca deliberately stayed vague. "You live at this place, don't you? Why did you stay at the College when Ancano showed up?"

 

Veryn seemed to be satisfied with her answer for now. "The Psijic Order showed up as I was about to leave the College and then things went a bit awry. Besides, I was in the middle of working out some rather complex equations about the Eye with some of my friends. We've actually found out that according to the commonly accepted laws of magic, it is _impossible_ for the Eye to exist at all. And yet it's here, at the College, so now we'll have to be using some less conventionally means of calculation, such as dividing by zero, and-"

 

"Hold on," Bricca interrupted him, before he could get carried away too much in his enthusiasm. "Who are the Psijic Order? What do you have to do with them? Are you part of it?”

 

“They're-” Veryn fell silent and scratched his arm, apparently deep in thought. “They're an ancient order of very powerful wizards. I don't belong with them, but they somehow got wind of what's going on with the College here. That's about all I know about them either.”

 

Veryn motioned for her to follow him. As they descended a pair of stairs, covered with moss, he started explaining.

 

"On the same day that I learned of Ancano coming to the College, a Psijic monk visited me and what he said turned me around when it came to leaving. That, and well, the Eye. The Psijics want to stop Ancano and the Thalmor from taking the Eye for themselves, so we are on common ground there. A few days ago, that monk, Quaranir, visited me again, much to Ancano's distaste. Suffice to say, damn fetcher hates my guts even more by now." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Quaranir, as vague as only a Psijic can be, told me to find someone – or _something_ – called the Augur of Dunlain down here."

 

He halted at a narrow door, its iron decorations long since rusted away. "I need to go through here. Would you like to join me?"

 

Bricca nodded and watched him crouch at the door. She wondered what Ancano would pay for this information. "You don't know exactly what to expect when it comes to the Augur?"

 

Veryn pressed his fingertips against the lock. "Tolfdir mentioned something about a magical accident. Everyone else is rather evasive about the Augur, so we'll have to see. The Midden, especially the part that we're entering now, is full of old experiments. We cleared out most of the skeletons two decades ago, but I'm sure there's been people down here who've been messing around with necromancy since."

 

The lock flared up green for a second, but the door didn't budge. Bricca felt her curiosity being peaked by whatever was beyond it. She loved to delve into old ruins and discover long lost treasures. Everything, even mere knowledge, could be valuable when it was sold to the right person. To learn more about the Eye and to know things that Ancano did not, that was worth all the undead or cobwebs she could run into.

 

"Sure," she said, just as the lock lit up again and then clicked faintly. "I'll come." _Why not_?

 

Down and down they went, until Bricca had no idea any more how far underground they were. The moss on the walls had been replaced by rime, and parts of the walls were covered entirely in ice again. Bricca could see Veryn's breath condense in the air into little clouds. Slowly, the place became more natural as the remains of human work sunk away in the ice and made way for passages running through rough stone. They passed a large cavern, entirely frozen and with a thin bridge of ice that was held up only by magic. Now and then there were doors, most of which led to nowhere or opened onto collapsed ceilings and heaps of frozen-over debris. One door was closed shut and did not have a lock, and even Veryn was unable to open it with magic.

 

"The Psijics didn't tell you about this?" Bricca asked, slightly amused. Veryn answered with a grunt, staring at the door with his arms crossed.

 

"Not exactly. The Psijics never tell you anything you really ought to know. This door is brimming with magic though. I doubt you are able to feel it, especially with the Eye drowning almost everything else out, but I'm convinced the Augur may have something to do with it."

Bricca nodded and tried to make herself comfortable on some nearby rocks, while Veryn set out to somehow undo the enchantments on the door. She amused herself by luring critters towards her, enticing them to come near, only to sink her teeth in their veins and suck out the sweet blood. After at least an hour had passed, she started to get bored. She cast a glance at Veryn, who was too absorbed with his spells to notice, and stood up, stretching her limbs and attempting to wriggle her numb toes. When she was about to mention that she would head back to the College proper, a disembodied voice filled the air.

 

"Still you persist. You may enter."

 

As the door swung open, she met Veryn's eye. He shook his head in quiet disbelief, and entered the room, a ball of fire ready in his hand. The room turned out to be empty and disappointingly small, containing only a crumbling small well. Something was floating above it, roughly shaped like a ball and looking as if it consisted of pure magicka. It radiated blue light and flickered in and out of existence.

 

"Are you the Augur?" Bricca stared at the thing with undisguised disappointment. "I had expected something more... substantial."

 

The Augur shifted a few times, and then that booming, ghostly voice sounded again.

 

"I am that which you have been seeking," it resonated.

 

"I was told to find you," Veryn said. While he no longer was immediately ready to attack, he still seemed very wary.

 

The Augur hummed. "Your efforts are in vain. Those who sent you have not told you what they seek. What you seek."

 

Bricca narrowed her eyes at the Augur, wondering if it was somehow trying to trick them. "And what is it that we seek?"

 

"You seek that which all who wield magic seek. Knowledge. You shall find this: Knowledge will corrupt. It will destroy. It will consume. You seek meaning, shelter in knowledge, but you will not find it." Veryn shifted on his spot, clearly uncomfortable with the answer, but the Augur was not done talking yet. "The Thalmor sought the same thing, and it shall lead to his end as it has so many others. Inquisitor Ancano, he calls himself. He seeks information about the Eye, but what he shall find will be quite different. His answers will be his undoing. Your path however differ from most. You are being guided and may save your College. I will tell you what you need to know to follow it."

 

"What do I need to stop the Thalmor from getting their hands on the Eye of Magnus?"

 

"You wish to acquire knowledge about the Eye, not just to stop Ancano, but for your own gain as well. If you wish to see through Magnus' Eye without being blinded, you will need his staff. I bid you good luck in finding it." With that, the Augurs light dimmed down, leaving the room shrouded in just a pale blue sheen.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

A few nights later, Bricca made her way up the stairs through the main tower. At the top, far above the Arcaneum, resided the Archmage. Although he was giving a lecture downstairs, he'd left his door unlocked. That man was entirely too trusting, especially with a Thalmor around. His quarters were fancy, richly decorated with elaborately carved and gilded furniture, thick tapestries and a great deal of shelves, packed with vials, books and small Dwarven instruments. In the middle was a large round garden. Wisps of magelight hovered around the pale white tree growing in there, casting the room in a ghostly blue light. Bricca pulled the poison she had made earlier out of her bag. It had turned into a thick, muddy brown sludge that slowly churned and moved around in its flask as if it had a life of its own. Savos Aren liked to drink a glass of good Skingrad wine before he went to sleep. Some of the higher-up mages complained loudly about what they called a waste of septims, especially when it came to importing the bottles all the way from the Empire. On a tall side table stood one of those much discussed bottles, opened already and roughly three-quarters full. Surilie Brothers, the label read. A rack on the nearby wall held the rest of Aren's alcoholic treasure: more Surilie Brothers, expensive spiced wine from southern High Rock and fruity cider from Anvil. Unfortunately, all of them were sealed, so Bricca decided to pour some of the sludge only in the opened bottle. She didn't even have to shake or stir the poison. It sizzled faintly and then dissolved, leaving no trace at all. From then on, she visited Savos Aren every other night, watching him sleep from a distance and dripping the sludge in his wine, and as time passed his health started deteriorating slowly.

 

Some weeks later, Ancano called her again for a meeting, this time in the Hall of the Elements. He made an angry and anxious impression on Bricca, continually muttering under his breath and pacing up and down past the Eye of Magnus.

 

"My assassin," he said, wringing his hands together. "Here to save the day."

 

Bricca raised an eyebrow at him. Ancano seemed very distraught about something.

 

"I need you to do an extension on the original contract. Nothing you should not be able to handle, especially not with the great job you're doing with the Archmage." The Thalmor made a nearly choked sound. His pale gold skin was flushed and Bricca smelt cheap beer on his breath when he talked. It amused her greatly to see the man lose control enough to get drunk, especially on beer, instead of wine. "I know what he did," Ancano continued, rambling half to himself. "Talked to the Augur about it, but it's mine. I came here for the Eye and I will not leave before I have discovered its secrets. And you are going to help me with that. I want you to kill Uvirith. He's gone away for a while, looking for something he believes will pry the Eye from my hands. Unfortunately for him, that's where you come in. As soon as he comes back you will kill him. I'll pay you twice the price you'd normally get."

 

Bricca felt her stomach slowly sink towards her toes as she heard the elf speak. Suddenly his drunkenness didn't seem so funny any more, nor was the way he glanced continually at the Eye anything to laugh about. It was as if Ancano was checking as if it was still here, with a maniacal hunger in his pale eyes. She couldn't kill Veryn just like that! To slaughter a fellow Dark Brother was a near unforgivable sin, something you just didn't do. It was unthinkable to do it at the direct command of someone else then the Night Mother or a Speaker of the Black Hand. And now some stuck-up, power-crazed high elf demanded of her to kill someone she regarded as something like a friend, just to further his own goals. What was this, some sort of sick test the Night Mother had thought up? A part of her confusion and loathing must have shown on her face, because Ancano stalked towards her, spittle flying out of his mouth. Bricca tried to stand her ground, clenching her jaws stubbornly.

 

"No backing out. You know what will happen to your Sanctuary if you do and what will happen to you, you filthy daughter of Molag Bal!" Ancano made a mocking gesture at her, conjuring fire out of nothing and pretending to throw it at her. Bricca flinched, letting out a high squeak of fear and surprise. She backed away in fear and felt her cheeks burn in humiliation when Ancano laughed out loud.

 

"It's good to see we are on the same line here," Ancano said, smiling amicably. At that moment, Bricca decided that she hated him, and that she would not mind seeing him dead once it was safe to kill him. But first, she would have to kill Veryn, a thought that did not sit well with her. Once she regained her composure she forced a smile.

 

"You are barking mad", she hissed. "And if you intend to have this contract fulfilled well, you will treat me with some more respect. The Dark Brotherhood is not your servant and so help me Sithis, if you do ever do something like this again, you'd better start checking every darkened corner of your quarters just in case. But let's head back to the contract. Uvirith will be dead before he knows it. Do you have any specific wishes in how you'd like to see him killed?"

 

Ancano stammered something that might have been an apology, before raving on about Veryn again. "I want him to die! I don't care how. For all I care you slice his throat in the courtyard once he comes back here! Anything you can do to kill him before he conspiring even more with his friends in here against me!"

 

The following days she hid in her room, lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling while she thought. She mulled over Ancano time and again, trying to assess his risk. Did he truly know about their Sanctuary or was it just a good guess? There were rumours enough after all in Falkreath Hold about the Brotherhood. He also didn't seem to know that Veryn was a Dark Brother or did he know and was that the reason he insisted on using the Brotherhood as a tool? She had tried to pray to the Night Mother for guidance, but She stayed quiet. Far off, in a distant corner of her mind, she could feel the Night Mother's presence, nestled there ever since that morning Bricca had hidden in the coffin. It was strangely soothing to know the Night Mother would watch out for her, but Her continued silence worried Bricca. Before Aedoric had been chosen as a listener he had been required to slay his friends and kill off an entire Sanctuary. How much of all this was the Night Mother's doing? She kicked the bed with her heels in frustration. What would Aedoric have done if he was here in her stead? He would probably have told her to get her act together and do what she thought was necessary. The Dark Brotherhood never failed a contract. But then, did Ancano telling her what to do even count as a contract? Bricca severely doubted he had completed the Black Sacrament, which technically was the only ground for a contract to even exist. A letter to Astrid, despite her position as a Matron, was not enough. Astrid wouldn't want Veryn to die either, but if the fate of the entire Sanctuary and everyone in it depended on his death, did Bricca have any choice?

 

Aedoric would have laughed at her. " _You're_ _over thinking_ _this again_ ," she could almost hear him say. For him, everything was always simple. He had a strong sense of duty; to the Brotherhood, to the Empire, and to her. _And still he left you behind and disappeared_ , a little voice in her head said. She scowled at the wall, and at the wardrobe, and at the little desk full of maps of Skyrim. No, Aedoric wasn't much help right now. She rubbed her eyes, feeling worn out. _Motierre._ Another of the problems she couldn't overcome at the moment. The Night Mother had told her to go to Volunruud, but instead of going there she had been stuck in Winterhold for months. She already imagined arriving at Volunruud and discovering that Motierre had left long ago. Too late, the party was over, and her credibility as a Listener was tossed out of the window. Astrid would be delighted. _Motierre_. Ever since she had heard the name for the first time it had nestled itself in her head. There was something about it, something she couldn't entirely put a finger on.

 

It wasn't until the next week, while she was sitting in the back of the Hall of the Elements listening to a lecture on Doomstones, that it clicked in her head and she made the connection she'd been looking for all this time. As soon as Drevis Neloren was done talking, Bricca sprinted away to the Arcaneum, grabbing _Famous Families of Greater Betony_ from its shelf and swatted the swarm of moths around her away. The damn bugs seemed attracted both by the magelight and the musty old books in here, but all they ever did was hover in the way. Unable to contain her excitement, she smacked the book on a nearby table, earning herself some angry glances from nearby students. Hurriedly she leafed through it, looking up the Motierres again and wondering how she ever could have missed it. Some of the Motierres had originally lived in Chorrol, for hundreds of years, but had moved to the Imperial City during the Oblivion Crisis due to a business conflict. Except it hadn't been a business conflict. It had been a conflict between a certain François Motierre and a group of shady underground thugs, culminating in the latter group sending an assassin after Motierre. Then the Dark Brotherhood had been hired, and Aedoric had solved everything in a matter of days. With a sudden, grim satisfaction Bricca snapped the book shut. She would just follow Aedorics example and everything would end up as desired. Ancano would get his contract, Astrid wouldn't have to know anything and just had to take the money and once she was done at the College she'd make a detour to Volunruud to check out the Night Mother's assignment. Smiling, she made her way to her room to start planning.


	6. Dungeons Deep and Caverns Old

**Chapter VI**

 

**_Dungeons Deep and Caverns Old_ **

 

* * *

 

The Archmage looked ill. His normally blue-tinted skin had paled to some indistinct shade of yellowish grey and his eyes were only a dull dark red. Clearly, Savos Aren had seen better days and Veryn began to suspect that Bricca probably had a hand in his condition. When it came to Aren personally, he was not too bothered about the man's impending death. The Archmage did his job only meagrely, delegating much of his tasks to Mirabelle Ervine and he was very keen to just let anything run its course. But if he died, his post would be empty and it was very well possible for the Thalmor to attempt a power grab, or at the very least for them to heavily influence the decision of whoever would be Aren's successor. Veryn hoped that the Archmage would hold out long enough until the fuss around the Eye of Magnus was settled and Ancano had no reason to be here any more.

 

Today was the third time in a month they were assembled in the Archmage's quarters to discuss the Eye. Tolfdir, Mirabelle, Aren and of course Veryn himself were gathered around a table covered with books and notes, all pertaining to the Eye and its apparent counterpart: the Staff.

 

"The last time the Staff has surfaced was over two hundred years ago in Morrowind. It is mentioned in writing in the third year of the current era, just before the Red Year. I have every reason to believe its owner died in the eruption of Red Mountain and that the Staff, as great artefacts are wont to do, disappeared." Mirabelle Ervine put down her notes. "I can recommend reading up on these, Lord Uvirith."

 

"Thank you." Veryn reached for the notes, still annoyed at how she tried to avoid looking at him directly and at her insistence of addressing him with his noble title. "I haven't found anything in the library as of yet. The last time, you mentioned the Synod I believe, Archmage?"

 

Aren burst out coughing and grasped the arms of his chair, leaning forward while he gasped for air. "Very uncooperative," he wheezed. "Just wanting to hoard magical artefacts. But yes, I think they are after the Staff as well. They kept asking if we knew where it was when they visited the College last month, so clearly they have reason to believe the thing is in Skyrim."

 

"They apparently believe we're keeping it in a closet somewhere." Mirabelle pinched her nose and scrunched her eyebrows, appearing awfully annoyed with everything around her. "Eventually they inquired about the ruins of Mzulft, although they did not want to give any reasons why. Perhaps you should have a chat with them, although I doubt they will be very forthcoming. It has been a while since they left, but they they will be in Mzulft for the coming months at least."

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

After he had saddled his horse outside Winterhold's stables he left her waiting patiently, scratching at the snow with her hooves.

 

“Soon,” Veryn muttered, kneeling at his backpack and searching though it for the third time to see if he had everything he needed. Mzulft lay over a week of riding from Winterhold, in the far east of Skyrim. If he had forgotten anything he could not simply head back to the College. A sudden noise, a twig breaking under a boot, caught his attention. He jerked his head up, breath catching in his throat and magic tingling ready at his fingertips.

 

“Who's there?” he called out, feeling a chill run down his spine as he nearly got caught unaware. His answer was a bout of heavy coughing and then a mer stepped forward from the bushes. Beneath the shadow of his hood feverish red eyes glistened in a sallow, sickly face.

 

“Archmage,” Veryn said. The mer coughed again.

 

“Yes,” he said, wheezing for breath. “Please, you must hear me out.”

 

To his surprise, the Archmage hadn't spoken in Imperial, but in Dunmeris, the tongue spoken in Morrowind. _He doesn't want anyone to listen in_ , Veryn thought. _Something's wrong_.

 

“Veryn, please, listen to me.” Savos Aren wrung his hands in despair, apparently taking Veryns silence as a rejection. Veryn nodded and made a motion for the older man to continue.

 

“I'm sorry,” Aren said, his voice close to breaking. “It should have been me to tell you about Ancano. I was mistaken, so very mistaken. I thought he wouldn't be  a threat , but he is. This illness of mine... it's him. He is behind it.  I suspect he has been poisoning me and I am unable to stop him. Every day I am getting weaker. I am old and now I am dying.”

 

_Bricca. Hired by Ancano?_ Veryn shivered.

 

“I need you to help me,” Savos whispered. “I have something powerful, an artefact and Ancano must never find it. I want you to take it and keep it hidden until the time comes that you may have use of it.” He smiled weakly. “Don't think too badly of me then. _Keep it secret. Keep it safe._ He must _not_ get his hands on it.”

 

Veryn pulled his cloak closer around him in a futile attempt to keep the cold away. “What do you mean? What sort of thing are you talking about?”

 

The Archmage hesitated. “It is better if you don't ask.” He held out a bundle, a wool blanket wrapped around something heavy. “Take this. Make sure to keep it away from sight. If anyone asks, we've never talked.”

 

Only after Savos Aren left Veryn took a closer look at the bundle, pulling the folds away. The artefact was made of stone and shaped like a ring, but with a space between two ends and a knob in the middle. A torc, Bretons called it, a neck ring worn by their ancient warriors. This one would never have been worn, as it was too large and unwieldy. Rather, it seemed decorative and heavily imbued with magicka. When he ran his hand along the twisted lines carved in it he could feel the complicated charms that were bound to  it . He looked around nervously. The  piece made him feel uneasy.  What if Ancano did find out? What was so wonderful about a piece of stone that the Archmage had to hand it over? And  _why_ was Bricca working with the Thalmor? He wrapped the wool back over the stone and hid it in his pack before riding off towards Mzulft.

 

As he passed Windhelm, Veryn toyed with the thought of riding so far eastward that he would cross the border with Morrowind. It would leave Ancano and his threats behind, diminish the risk of the Thalmor finding him to nearly zero and bring some much needed rest in his life. On the other hand, he would have to ditch his moon sugar somewhere to avoid being caught and imprisoned for smuggling and there was nothing left in Morrowind but endless ashes and Great House politics. His old keepsakes, mementos of Vvardenfell, had been lost to him when the Thalmor took them away and Morrowind would not bring him any closer to deciphering the Eye of Magnus, where as the Synod might. The old Imperial Mages Guild had not survived the interregnum that followed the Oblivion Crisis. It had split into factions and eventually it fell apart, making room for two rivalling groups. The Synod and the College of Whispers continually strived to outdo themselves and gain the favour of the Elder Council. Veryn had never borne much love for the old Mages Guild and he disliked its successors even more. The College of Winterhold was a godsend. It was neutral and far enough up north to stay out of Imperial business and ever since the great collapse there had been only a few members of House Telvanni around.

 

It was a pain to travel the land during Sun's Dawn. Veryn had left his horse at a nearby inn and now continued on foot towards Mzulft itself, wading through the thick snow one step at a time. At some places the snow had stacked up against rocks and became knee-deep, obscuring the narrow hunting tracks that led up the mountains. It took two days of searching before he came upon an ancient Dwemer road. It was covered in snow too, but stone arches rose above it at regular distances, making it easy to follow. He passed various smaller towers and watch houses, while in the distance Mzulft loomed up, built high along the mountains. Once he reached what looked like the Synod's base camp he halted, staring at it in wonder. He had expected it to be a busy place, bustling with people, but it looked completely abandoned. When he walked near he saw that some of the tents had collapsed or were torn down and the supply crates of the expedition were broken apart and ransacked. He frowned, looking around the camp for any signs of life, but there were none. The fires had snowed under and a lot of books and notes were ripped apart and lay scattered across the tents and the ground, damaged too much to be readable. A more thorough search led to the conclusion that all valuables were still around. Veryn set up his own camp sufficiently far away from the base camp. Whatever had caused it to be in this state, it wasn't bandits. He thought of the persistent rumours that had gone around the College for the last decades. Within the Dwemer Ruins, it was said, lurked the Falmer. They were twisted little creatures, not unlike blind snow goblins and normally they stuck to their dank caves. As of late however, stories had surfaced of Falmer going on raids, killing everyone and everything they came across indiscriminately. They were leaving the safety of their underground homes behind, expanding their territory. According to Arniel Gale they were becoming more organized, more wicked and cruel, causing Gale to put an end to his hobby of exploring Dwemer ruins.

 

"I've seen one of them," Gale had said once. "They're blind, but this one knew I was there and he looked at me, staring with an eyeless face, with skin grown over where the eye sockets should have been. I turned and ran and have never set a foot in one of those ruins since."

 

The thought of entering Mzulft while it was potentially filled with Falmer, let alone the thought of being in the dark, underground, made Veryns skin crawl. Whatever the Synod had been looking for down there, they hadn't returned with it. That meant the key to the Staff of Magnus, or perhaps even the Staff itself, was still up for grabs, Falmer or not. The next day, he woke up shivering and disoriented, soaked with sweat despite the frigid air, but he was unable to recall exactly what he had dreamt. After a sober breakfast he broke up the tent and hauling everything on his back again headed for the entrance to Mzulft to start his descent into the ruin. The entrance hall was hot, like most Dwemer ruins. The sudden heat enveloped him like a suffocating blanket, causing Veryn to halt and get rid of his heavy fur cloak. Just as he rolled it up and fastened it to his pack, someone called out to him in the dim hall.

 

"You... not one of them. You must... help me."

 

Slowly he walked towards the source of the sound. Even before he reached the man slumped against the wall the stench of old blood, rot and excrement assaulted his senses. The smell of Northwatch Keep, he thought and retched, but he forced himself to go on and kneel down near the man. His belly had been ripped open, but nothing vital had been hit. The man was burning up with fever and the cut was an awful mess of infected and necrotic tissue. His robes were coated with dried blood and pus. Once they had been a rich blue colour, but now were stained a filthy brown.

 

"You must... help." The man gasped for breath and tried to reach for Veryns hand.

 

"What happened here?" Veryn asked.

 

The man was silent for a while, wheezing in pain.

 

"They came from below. We... we thought they were just a myth... folklore... At night, they headed for the camps. They got most of us. Some of us ran. I was the only one who made it... nearly." His brow glistened with sweat. "In the Oculary... Paratus may still be alive. Please, help me... the pain.." He trailed off, nearly falling unconscious again.

 

"I'll help you," Veryn said, quietly withdrawing his dagger from it's sheath. "Just close your eyes and breathe. It will be over soon."

 

Too ill to question him, the man obeyed. With one hand, Veryn kept him steady and upright, before stabbing him at the base of the skull. The man's head lolled forward as his body went limp. Veryn stepped back, glad to take a gulp of fresher air and cleaned his blade. There was nothing he could have done to keep the man alive and so he continued onwards, smiling slightly.

 

In Morrowind there were a great many Dwemer ruins as well, dotted throughout the landscape. The ruins in Skyrim looked slightly different and the Dwemer in the north had made a lot more use of carved stone, but despite that the ruins felt instantly familiar. The thickness of the air, the faint smell of metal that one could distinguish even under the stench the Falmer had left and the sounds of metal clanging against metal; of pipes moving up and down and gears turning and creaking, of steam escaping into the air, he enjoyed them. His surroundings were faintly illuminated by the same blue-green light coming from the lamps that hung around the walls and ceilings, filled with some sort of gas. The Dwemer Automatons were the same too: spider-like workers that skittered around the ruins in a futile effort to repair what they had been programmed to do. The storerooms they got their supplies from must have been empty for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, but as long as the soul gems that powered them did not run out they would not quit their endless tasks. Veryn dealt with them from a fair distance, casting firebolts at them until they collapsed and running away when they came too near. Despite their size, they could be surprisingly harmful, lashing out with the razor-sharp tools they held with the ends of their legs. Only once they were down and had stopped smoking he went near to wrench their soul gems free from the molten heap of metal. He wandered around the ruins, exploring passages no man or mer had visited for centuries, dodged even more workers and soon lost track of time entirely. He set up a small camp whenever his body screamed for a bit of rest, food or moon sugar, trying to stick to those parts of Mzulft he had already cleared and were somewhat safe. He never was sure how long he slept. It could have been an hour, or half a day. Often he waited anxiously for the Falmer to come after him when he woke up screaming again, wondering if he had alerted everything in his vicinity. At times, he wandered almost aimlessly, pondering about the Eye of Magnus, obsessing over keeping it out Ancano's hands. Eventually, all his thoughts ended up with the Staff again, the key to unlock the full power of the Eye.

 

After what probably had been days he came across a second base camp. It was as abandoned as the one outside, built high upon wooden scaffolding, raised along the walls of a large cave, but there was one major difference: corpses. Various members of the Synod lay strewn around the wood, all of them in various states of decomposition. Veryn pulled up his scarf over his face in a vain effort to block the disgusting smell they gave off. Some of them seemed to have died by blunt force, their skulls splintered, but others seemed to have _melted_ away. Veryn made sure not to touch them. He crouched on top of the scaffold, listening intently to his surroundings. He had heard before of the rather fearsome chaurus; large insectoid creatures raised and domesticated by the Falmer. They lived in humid environments, often underground, but unlucky travellers sometimes stumbled across them in Skyrims bogs and marshlands. The most dangerous aspect of the chaurus was not its thick, chitinous skin that protected its body, nor the sharp, pincer-like claws it used to tear its prey apart. No, the danger was in the chaurus' acidic spit: a thick gooey poison that could eat its way even through hardened steel. Veryn had no intention at all to come anywhere close to them.

 

And so he waited, hiding in the darkness. He had cast a small spell, allowing him to see anything that was alive. Tiny bugs and insects glowed very dimly everywhere around him. Veryn ignored them and drew on his magicka to make the spell stronger, causing it to reach further. There was something moving in the cave at the end of the next corridor. He watched its movements in silence, trying to predict what it was going to do next. The problem with the beast was that the corridor was the only way forward right now, so he decided to try and sneak past it. Using his magic, Veryn made himself nigh invisible and made his way over to the chaurus' lair. Every sound he heard caused him to cringe and pause, looking around nervously before heading on. When he saw the chaurus he sucked in his breath, feeling ready to turn around and never come back. It was much larger than he had imagined it to be, but luckily it had its back turned towards him and was tearing apart something that could only be described as a shredded heap of bloodied meat. Veryn clambered onto the rocks behind it, climbing over them like a sabercat. He was nearly at the end when the chaurus put its head in the air, strings of raw meat dangling from the corners of its mouth and sniffed. Veryn froze at the spot, trying to draw the least amount of attention to himself as possible and the chaurus sniffed again. He watched the monster, eyes narrowed, afraid to breathe and praying for it to go away, when the chaurus opened its maw and dropped his meal on the ground. Almost faster than Veryn could react it turned around and spat.

 

_Damn!_

 

Veryn bit his lip to stop himself from shouting in surprise as he flung himself off the rocks. Making too much noise might alert any nearby Falmer, leading to a situation where a quick death was the most likeable outcome. Adrenaline surged through his veins and he became fully aware of everything happening in the room, overly alert for anything that could mean death. He dropped his pack and rolled away from the rocks and a second glob of acid, trying to cover his face with his arm. With a sizzling sound the stuff bit into the rock next to him and he could feel his arm sting where a few droplets ate through his clothes. He threw a fireball at the chaurus, immediately followed by a second one, but both of them bounded off the grey chitinous carapace. The chaurus clicked its jaws in annoyance at what it perceived as a puny elf wandering into its home. An elf who was proving very annoying when it sent jolts of electricity through the chaurus's body. The monster stood there dazed for a second, its many legs twitching and then it uttered an awful, bloodcurdling screech that almost sent Veryn into an immediate state of panic. He kept trying to hit the thing with magic, the rough stone of the wall chafing painfully against his back. The chaurus was unfazed by almost all of his attacks and slowly skittered closer, the dim light coming from the Dwemer lamp in the distance reflecting in its many faceted eyes.

 

"Fus!"

 

He tried to Shout at it to keep it away, but all the Shout did was toss the chaurus to the ground for a second. _B'vek, why?_ He had to get rid of the beast somehow before it tore him apart, Veryn thought as he moved along the wall to avoid another shower of acid. He was panicking too much now to even shout correctly, despite the mantra of the Greybeards that always was at the front of his thoughts. _Breath and focus._ This wasn't really the time to sit down and start clearing his mind. Unfortunately, Arngeir had flat out refused to teach him any tactics that would be of use in a situation like this.

 

_"Violence is the least of the Voices uses and it should only be used in times of True Need."_

 

Veryn assumed that being about to get eaten by a chaurus whilst stuck in an underground ruin would count as 'true need', even for the pacifistic Greybeards. While he tried to concentrate on Shouting, the chaurus leapt at him and he cried out in pain when the beast pinned his legs. When he tried to push it away its claws drove deeper into his flesh. Gritting his teeth, he glared at it, trying to wrench his arm away from the grabbing front legs. Elenwens taunts were never far away. _Just give up_ , he heard her whisper in his head. _Struggling will only cause you more pain._ He hated her as much as he hated that damn chaurus that was clicking its jaws, readying itself to dig into the delicious living treat it had now captured. Veryn didn't plan on becoming a dinner. Despite the situation and the throbbing, awful pain in his leg, he laughed. To his own ears, it sounded like the laugh of a madman, but he hadn't survived the Thalmor only to die here, like this. The chaurus clicked angrily, momentarily confused by its prey. Unfortunately for the beast, the few seconds it was distracted proved to be its undoing. A Shout, much more determined than the last one sent it flying across the room, while a sudden fire burned its eyes. Screeching and howling in pain, the molten, jellied remains of some of its eyes running down its head, it launched itself at the Dunmer again. The chaurus never noticed the dagger Veryn lashed out with. Four times it got stabbed with a blade of Skyforged Steel, until its legs gave in and it sunk to the ground, bleeding and confused. After minutes, it finally died, blood and acid leaking out from the corpse and forming little puddles underneath it.

 

His breath fast and jagged, Veryn dropped the dagger from his trembling hand and leant back against the wall. He closed his eyes and tried to gather his wits, his thoughts a mess in his head. He had to get away from the cave and the dead chaurus before the Falmer decided to check out the noise. His leg protested when he crawled over to his discarded backpack and by the time he had finally made it to a relatively safe place without Falmer or chauri he felt as if he was on the verge of collapsing. He sat down, resting his head on his knees for a while and then continued to look at the wounds. Two deep gashes ran along his calf, bleeding heavily. He cleaned them up and dabbed a thick cream on them. Over the next couple of days his leg healed well. The cream, smelling strongly of mustard, knitted his flesh together until all that remained were large, pale scars. J _ust a few more to add to the collection,_ he thought wryly. Even before the Thalmor had gotten involved, years of dungeon delving had left their marks on him. The blight diseases, lying dormant in his blood, didn't help either. They made him immune to diseases and infection, made his body far more resilient than it should have been and had kept him alive when he should have been dead. Unfortunately, they caused his body to heal in a way that was entirely _wrong_ , turning even the most minor injuries into thick, disfiguring scars and occasionally into patches ofhardened, flaking white skin.

 

The next couple of days went over surprisingly uneventful. To his great relief, Veryn did not come across any more chauri. He continued exploring Mzulft even more carefully. Clearly he had come into Falmer territory now. Some of the halls had small shrines or way markers, crafted from bone and chitin. He hid himself in a niche in the wall behind one of those strange piles when his spell picked up something living and tried to cover up his own scent with magic. The Falmer, for it was one of those vile creatures, shuffled down the hall, covered in scraps of cloth and leather. It was small, goblinoid in shape, but with a face that looked like a mockery of that of a mer: large pointed ears and a similar skull structure, but missing a nose, lips and eye sockets, its teeth jagged and pointy. It smelled disgusting too, of mould and rot, earth, mushrooms and worms kept too long in the heat. Even when it passed Veryn barely dared to breathe in, as the stench of the beast kept hanging in the air. His path continued full of pauses and backtracking, waiting for hours so larger Falmer patrols could walk along without noticing him, hiding behind corners and machinery until his muscles cramped, just so he could pass safely once the right moment was there. Eventually he came to the point where he could not go any further at all. Every door was locked and when he crouched at one of them, trying to get a feel for the lock with his magic, someone at the other side started shouting.

 

"Back off, you filthy mongrels! I'll burn you alive!"

 

"I'm not a Falmer!" Veryn shouted back.

 

"G-Gavros? Is that you?"

 

"No! Can you open that door?"

 

"Who are you? What have you done with Gavros?" The voice on the other side rose.

 

"Nothing! Just open the damn door!"

 

Veryn could hear the lock being opened and something heavy scraping across the floor. The man that appeared in the opening pulled him inside roughly and immediately shut the door again, barring it with a large beam of Dwemer metal before turning around and glaring viciously at Veryn.

 

"Now who are you and what do want?" He scowled at Veryn in disgust as he took in the mer's face. "Where is Gavros? He was supposed to come here with one of the crystals. I've been waiting for him. How odd, I don't even know for how long." The man shook his head. He clearly belonged to the Synod, wearing the now tattered and filthy blue robes and cloak. His dark hair and olive skin betrayed his Imperial descent. Streaks of thick, black oil stained his clothes and hands and his eyes shone almost as if he had a fever.

 

"Why are you here instead of Gavros?" His voice had taken on a harsh and accusing tone and he continued glaring at Veryn.

 

Veryn shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "Your friends are dead. I haven't found any living human or mer either inside or outside this place until now."

 

The Imperial staggered back as if he had been hit in the face. Shaking, his eyes teared up, he sat down on a large hollow pipe. "It was those things, wasn't it? Those... Falmer? Don't worry about it, they said. Yeah, well, back in Cyrodiil you don't have them. It's just a legend. Just like dragons, until Crispus got dragged off by one. By the Eight, how were we supposed to know what a miserable and barbaric place Skyrim really is! And now those Falmer have probably taken our crystals too."

 

"What sort of crystals are you talking about?"

 

"The ones for the machines here of course! Are you daft? I've been trying to start the machines by hand, but without the crystals they can't project anything. It doesn't work at all!" The Imperial gestured at the various tools laying spread around. "Who are you even? Why are you here instead of the Synod?" Suddenly he sounded suspicious and started staring at Veryn again.

 

"My name is Veryn Uvirith. I am a mage of the College of Winterhold. I was looking for the Synods help to find something." He tried to keep his voice as calm as possible, hoping to soothe the man slightly. He decided to forgo any of his titles. He did not care much about his holdings in Morrowind anymore and he doubted the Synod mage would either, especially now the man started to grow increasingly hostile.

 

"You're from the College and you expect me to help you with whatever it is that you are seeking in this godsforsaken place? Get a grip on reality, man, because that's not going to happen!" The Imperial stood up and turned his back to Veryn demonstratively, but then he changed his mind all of a sudden. "Unless you can get me one of those focusing crystals I need. Those monsters, the Falmer, they must have taken them somewhere. Perhaps they even have the old ones, but that's all right. I can make new lenses if I must and if you get one of them we might just get this machine here to work." Then he held out his hand tentatively. "The name's Paratus. Paratus Decimius. And you must be looking for the machine, just like we did. It's supposed to show us where to find the buried artefacts of Skyrim, but without the lenses it does not work. I need to fix it. Since you kept yourself alive in this place, maybe you can help me get the lenses and I will let you use the map.”

 

Veryn left Paratus to his own again the next day. There was a Falmer camp nearby that might hold one of the Dwemer focusing crystals. Something that was clearly Dwemer in origin lay in the middle of a primitive shrine in the encampment, made of stacked up bone and skulls. He scouted the surroundings of the camp for two days and then went in while the Falmer were mostly asleep. A couple of guards that were patrolling around the premises went down fast with a dagger in their back and a handful of flame in their face. Skirting between makeshift huts, built out of chitin and metal, Veryn made his way to the crystal. He looked over his shoulder with every other step he took, afraid of any of the Falmer waking up. With the blind creatures, using magic to stay unseen was useless. Instead he muffled his noise and hid his smell, since the Falmer relied on those senses to spot their prey.

Thank the gods nothing happened. After he picked up the thing and slunk away the camp stayed dark and quiet as if nothing had happened at all. When Paratus let him back in, where he was safe, Veryn sat down and reached for a bottle of wine. Paratus was following his every movement, muttering something about _damn elves_ and _freelance adventurers_.

 

"I've got a crystal for you. I hope it works."

 

Paratus grasped the crystal from Veryns hand, his face instantly brightening up. The crystal was large and spherical, with a thick ring of metal around it and small round lenses dotting it's surface. On one side it was damaged and you could see the little pins and screws inside, connected to each other with thin wires and carved pieces of stone.

 

"This might just work. You – you may have just saved the entire project! This place, we call it the Oculary." He gestured for Veryn to walk along and opened another door. An enormous machine towered up before them, with decorated platforms and walkways surrounding it. "All our research points to the Dwemer being intent on discerning the nature of the divine. This machinery, all of it, was designed to collect starlight and then.. I'm not sure. Split it, somehow? But the machine was damaged and we lacked some of the key parts. Until now, that is. Why don't you go and get some sleep. I'll try and see if I can get this to work."

When Veryn woke up next he was still buzzed by the moon sugar he had taken the night before. He felt good and spent the next hour rummaging through the Synods food stores for breakfast. He lied back on his bed, enjoying the bread, cheese and salted meat. Clearly, the expedition had been funded well. Paratus was already at work, or perhaps he had been at work all night long. He crouched at the top of the machine, covered in oil and was carefully adjusting some of the large lenses that were attached to fragile curved beams.

 

"Magnificent, isn't it!" he exclaimed. "Took an incredible amount of work to get it running again. I spent hours etching the new lenses for the crystal. Here's hoping it will all be worth it!"

 

"I could help you out if you wish," Veryn said. Paratus looked a bit sceptical, but waved at him to come up. Hours upon hours of work followed, with every detail about the machine having to be exactly the way Paratus wanted it. It was precise and fiddly work and Paratus was not always the most pleasant company. He talked a lot and nitpicked on everything, but at last the moment was there when they carefully lowered the focusing crystal in its socket and turned the machine on. It sputtered initially, but then lights started to blink at a panel high above and a loud, low drone filled the air. The roof opened, squealing and whirring, to let in a bright beam of daylight. High above them, the sky was bright blue and cloudless, with the sun shining fiercely.

 

"Well, we should probably wait until it is night and then start focusing the lenses." Paratus pranced around, sounding as happy as a child. "They won't be able to believe this back in the Imperial City!" That night, a small bundle of starlight was caught by the lenses. It was almost too thin to see at all. "Heating and cooling the crystal should do the trick. No – not you!" Paratus nearly shoved Veryn out of the way. "You're half-blind. Your aim is probably way off and you are not going to risk my project!"

 

Veryn scowled at him, but moved reluctantly out of Paratus' way. Carefully, the Synod mage started casting spells and pressing buttons, chewing his lip and scrunching his eyebrows in a state of deep concentration. With loud, grinding noises the mirrors and star maps on the dome-shamed ceiling started to move around, as if driven by some invisible hand. Then, suddenly, the light was caught in the exact right spot. Thick beams of pure white starlight hung suspended in the air, brightening up the entire place. It was a marvellous sight and Paratus squealed with joy before he ran down. "Excellent... Excellent!" he shouted out, intently studying a crude map of upper Tamriel that was projected on the wall.

 

"No...." he suddenly muttered, raking his hands through is hair in agitation. "No! It's all wrong! The map, it should light up like the night sky!" Paratus jabbed his finger at a bright focal point at the height of Winterhold. "This! This is your interference! Look at it. Look at it! " He reached out and grabbed Veryns arm, roughly trying to drag the Dunmer over to the map. "You're trying to stall my work? Well? Explain yourself!"

 

Dots of white light started dancing in Veryns vision when Paratus dug his fingers into his arm. Out of reflex he cast a spell at the man, shocking the Synod mage with lightning. Growling, Veryn staggered back, trying to get rid of the growing panic that gnawed through his mind.

 

"Don't," he hissed at Paratus, readying a second spell just in case. Paratus stared at him, twitchy and scared.

 

"You're awfully jumpy, aren't you," he said, laughing nervously and rubbing his hand where the lightning had stung him. "But you must agree that it is because of you and your College that everything has failed! I'm not a fool. I can make the connection between this and you showing up!" He backed off when Veryn glanced at him, eyes wide with fear.

 

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Veryn grunted. He watched Paratus like a hawk, while trying to keep his eye on his surroundings at the same time. His heart was beating in his throat, his body acutely aware of everything. He gritted his teeth as Paratus started talking again, loathing the man and everything he stood for.

 

"You – you must have an idea! Either you are lying to me or..." Paratus seemed to get a sudden idea. "Or... there is something at your College that is so immensely powerful that it is interfering with the Oculary here. Something beyond what I had anticipated. But what is it?" He peered at Veryn, still cowering, but with a glint of confidence in his eyes. Clearly he had realized something that Veryn did not and he was not afraid to use that knowledge as leverage. Letting his magic dissipate, Veryn crossed his arms and stared blankly at Paratus, making a feeble attempt to placate the man.

 

"We may have something, yes."

 

Paratus nodded, moving his head up and down quickly like a bird trying to wrench a worm from the ground.

 

"Of course. If we take that into account, these results make a lot more sense. You are looking for something, yes?" Paratus eyed him shrewdly. "The Staff of Magnus, perhaps?"

An involuntary twitch of his right eye gave Veryn away immediately and Paratus' face lightened up considerably.

 

"Look at the map. I'm not going to give away any details, there's too many secrets of the Synod involved and you probably wouldn't be able to comprehend - " He winced when Veryn rolled his eye in irritation. "Have you ever seen the Orrery in the Imperial City? It was the inspiration for this idea. Instead of projecting the sky, I adapted the machine and the crystals to project all of Tamriel and – well, what's important is that we should have gotten a map with all sources of magical power in northern Tamriel right now. And yet there are only two locations visible. One of them is of course Winterhold, your College. The other can only be Labyrinthian. And Labyrinthian holds ancient secrets. Yes, I dare say you will find your staff there." Paratus became agitated and his eyes started to get that feverish gleam again. "But remember, mage of Winterhold, I now know that your College holds something that the Synod will be very interested in. Go and get your staff. I don't need it."

 

Without saying another word, Paratus stomped off. Veryn shook his head. The man had been trapped inside Mzulft for too long, on his own, with the constant looming thread of Falmer and chauri. It was only very reluctantly that Paratus ended up agreeing to following Veryn out of the ruin and whilst doing so he complained endlessly and kept making passive-aggressive remarks, shying away only when the Dunmer seemed to become angry. For Veryn, it was a truly frustrating week. Paratus was awful at staying quiet and it happened more than once that they made only a narrow escape from a group of nearby Falmer that went to check out the noises. It was during one of the nights that Quaranir came to visit again. Paratus was fast asleep in their makeshift camp and unable to find any rest himself, Veryn had offered to keep watch. It wasn't a bad thing to do: merely sitting in the dark with some of the Synods good Imperial wine and keeping up a spell to detect any nearby living things. Just like the last time, Quaranir took Veryn by surprise by appearing out of thin air and freezing time. The Psijic looked tired this night, worn and old, with lines creasing his face.

 

"Dragonborn! I come bearing bad tidings and a warning to you. You have done well thus far, but there are hard and trying times ahead. It is imperative that you return to your College at once! My Order unfortunately -"

 

"Forbids you to say any more," Veryn added. He sighed and rubbed his right eye. "I know. But isn't there anything you can tell me? Give me some advice?"

Quaranir shook his head, his brow furrowing.

 

"I would, if I was allowed to. You will be called upon soon. Be prepared for everything. I wish you good luck and I am confident you will be able to make it out of this."

 

Despite Quaranirs attempt at reassuring words, Veryn stared at the darkness for a long while after the Psijic had left as suddenly as he had appeared. Paratus greeted him with a deriding smirk the next morning, looking pointedly at the empty bottle, but at least he kept his mouth shut for once. Veryn was more than happy to ditch him at the nearest inn and once he was on his own again he raced towards Winterhold. He barely rested along the way, exhausting both himself and his horse, but he managed to cut off a good two days of the usual travel time. When he arrived at the College, he realized what day it was. The twenty-first of march, the Spring Equinox and Azura's summoning day. He ran his hands through his hair in annoyance, his anxiety growing. Today was the first anniversary of his hard-won freedom. One year ago he'd agreed to Astrid's proposal of joining the Dark Brotherhood. One year since Elenwen had done her best to break him down and yet he had somehow made it through. He swallowed as he walked up the narrow bridges, afraid of what today held in store.

The College was in an even greater state of chaos than when the Eye of Magnus had arrived. People were shouting now and walked around with weapons drawn and spells ready to cast. A large crowd had gathered outside the Hall of the Elements and the more Veryn neared them the more he could feel the amount of magicka choking the air. It was strong enough to make even him nauseous. He was not surprised at all that the Eye had altered the results of Paratus' Dwemer machine. Pushing through the crowd, sending angry glances at the people around him so they moved aside, Veryn made his way to the Hall. It was packed as well, with all mages and researchers of some rank in the College gathered outside a large ward that blocked any and all access to the Eye of Magnus. Veryn listened in to the ongoing talks, cursing under his breath. Ancano was in there and he had found a way to channel the powers of the Eye of Magnus without using the Staff.

 

"We need to get that ward down!" Savos Aren stood at the front of the crowd, yellow and exhausted. He seemed even more shrivelled and ancient than before Veryn had left for Mzulft, his heavy and richly decorated robes weighing him down visibly. "Try it again, on the count of three! Keep casting until it breaks!"

 

Fire, ice and lightning flew through the air, battering at the magical shield for minutes. A collective gasp and sigh of relief sounded when it finally disappeared and Savos burst into the Hall proper. The Eye was glowing brightly and Ancano stood near it. He was channelling a beam of Magicka into the Eye continuously and it seemed as if he was leeching his power from the foundations of the College itself.

 

"Ancano! Stop this at once! I command you!" Unfortunately, Savos Aren was too sick to make much of an impression any more and he had to lean on Mirabelle Ervine to keep steady.

 

"Don't go near him," she hissed at Aren, but it was too late. The Archmage slowly walked towards the Thalmor, hands raised and at the ready to to cast a spell. The magic in the air intensified. Veryn could hear it in the air now, strange, otherworldly tones that mingled with the almost unbearably loud humming of the Eye. The was a flash of light and for a fraction of a second the world bathed in pure Magicka, before it exploded into numerous pieces. Veryn groaned as he hit the floor, thankful that his clothes at least took some of the impact. He peered around from where he lay. Mirabelle was seated against a pillar, clutching her side. Tolfdir was already standing again, but Veryn could not see where the Archmage was.

 

"Are you alright?" he heard Mirabelle ask. He nodded at her and tried to pull himself up. Agony shot up through his wrists and hands as soon as he leaned his weight on them, as if the nerves, bones and muscles inside had been covered in Dwemer oil and set alight. He ended up sitting awkwardly on his knees for the moment, eyes tearing up, to take in his surroundings. Everywhere around, mages tried to scramble to their feet. Around the Eye, Ancano had cast a new ward and he stood safe behind it, catching Veryns eye and grinning at the Dunmer in triumph. Then he felt someone yank his head back hard, keeping a firm grip on his hair and digging his or her fingernails deep into his skin. He was disoriented, his vision blurry and he tried to pull his head away, to reach at the person behind him with a knife, but his limbs felt like mud. His throat clenched and it was suddenly hard to breathe. The sounds of people screaming and yelling merged with Elenwen's laughter. Something pierced his right shoulder and he was thrown back at the ground. Pain flared from the wound, coming in waves. He tried to reach towards the thing stuck in his flesh, realizing he had to pull it out. Meanwhile, the pain kept getting worse and his right arm felt strangely stiff and detached, as if it was no longer a part of his body. The numbness slowly spread around, until his fingers cramped and couldn't move any more and his breathing started to slow down. He struggled for each breath, desperate to get air, panicking as his body refused to do what he wanted. The Eye of Magnus loomed over him, flaring brightly and briefly he spotted someone standing over him, then moving away again. The edges of his vision blurred and it was becoming harder and harder to discern reality from what was happening in his mind.

 

The voices around him were starting to fade out, changing in volume erratically and sounding distorted. The flickering of the Eye was repeating itself over and over, interspersed with faint moments that could have been from the past or the future, flashing before his eyes. A golden mask. Dragons. Helgen, burning. A dark prison ship. The Imperial City, on a day as normal as any. The glyphs on the Eye, burning in his vision and then he saw the Hall of the Elements as if he was flying above it. Bricca stood near his body, her daggers held loose in her hands and her hair falling down her back. Mirabelle Ervine, who had managed to stand up and was staring straight ahead as if everything was unreal. And Ancano, laughing as he channelled magicka at the Eye, laughing like Elenwen used to do. Suddenly, he was dragged back to his body again and he could see her standing there, smiling. He tried to shake his head, as he had relived this particular memory too often already.

 

" _No_ ", he tried to whisper, but the poison had paralysed his body. The only thing he could do was lay still and watch himself hang from his wrists as she forced his head back. Lightning sprang from her fingertips, aimed at his face. It burned through his eye and skin, leaving nothing but agony wherever it touched him. Inside his head, he screamed and screamed, until his sanity started slipping away. The memory started to loop too, repeating over and over again, but then tendrils of darkness flooded into his sight, expanding until they covered everything and pulling him away into the Void. Veryn welcomed it with every fibre of his being as it seemed the way out. Perhaps death was not that bad after all, he thought, floating in the Void like a wisp around a pool of water. Everything around him was silent and he longed to become a part of it, to have his thoughts become silent too, until they did and he felt himself slipping away.


	7. On the Road Again

**Chapter VII**

 

**On the Road Again  
**

 

* * *

 

 

The Hall of the Elements went quiet for only a second after Veryn collapsed on the floor. _“Murderer! Murderer!”_ the first cries went up. Someone barrelled into Bricca's back, a clumsy move to try and disarm her and she knocked them away. It was Enthir, now scrambling from the body on the ground, afraid to touch it.

 

She had expected Mirabelle to attack her as well, tried to ground herself against the womans magic, but Mirabelles attention was with the panicked students around her and with the pulsing blue light that came from the Eye and was flooding the room.

 

“Everyone! Evacuate the premises! We will convene in Winterhold,” she shouted. “Make sure everyone gets there safely!”

 

The people in the hall amassed at the door, trying to push through as fast as possible, hurrying to get away from Ancano and the Eye. Mirabelle stayed behind until she had directed everyone outside.

 

“Let us at least bury the bodies,” she said. “The Archmage too – he did not survive the explosion.”

 

Ancano only laughed. “Leave, mage, unless you want to join them.”

 

Mirabelle snarled and stepped forward, flinging a glob of spittle at Bricca. She tried to step away in time, but the wet dribble hit her throat and slid down on her clothes.

 

“I will not leave the College like this,  _Thalmor._ Your petty games aren't over yet.” With that, Mirabelle turned around and slammed the doors behind her, leaving Bricca alone with Ancano.

 

"Well, that's it," she said. "They're both dead. I'll get rid of the corpses for you, and then we'll talk payment."

 

If only he agreed to this. It was bad enough that Mirabelle was trying to make off with the bodies as well. Thank Sithis that Ancano had not one shred of decency in him and refused. It would've been a disaster if Mirabelle had taken them, just as it would be a disaster if Ancano refused her now as well. Gods, if only he didn't become suspicious right now and decided to get rid of them himself. Luckily he just grunted, which she took as a 'yes', and then the elf turned his attention back to the Eye again. Excellent. She dragged out Veryns body roughly, his head hitting the stone floor a few times, but once she was away from Ancano's sight she picked up the elf and threw him across her shoulders. She grabbed his backpack too, which was lay discarded in the entrance hall. Despite Veryn being lighter than she had expected the muscles in her shoulders and back burned by the time she reached the Midden. She threw the pack on the ground, hoping he didn't keep anything fragile in it, and then slid the elf off her shoulders too. The room they were in was small and dimly lit by some torches, but it was relatively warm and dry compared to the rest of the Midden. Someone had once done alchemical experiments in here, as evident by the burnt cauldrons and shattered glass alembics that lay discarded in a corner. Her own pack stood against another wall, her various saddlebags from months ago condensed to one pack that contained only what she needed. Veryn looked utterly dead when she knelt down near him. His lips had turned a pale grey and his face was drained of all blood. He didn't breathe and when she touched his skin it was cold. And yet, there was still some hope for him, taking the form of a small bottle of antidote that currently resided in Bricca's left front pocket. It had all been a ruse, one where Veryn was now suspended between life and death, the result of a nifty little poison called Languorwine. It had its legitimate uses in the school of Restoration magic. Healers often used it to cause the onset of death early with the elderly and sick. It was kept a secret, something that was only whispered and written about, but with the antidote, Languorwine could be used to fake someone's death. Aedoric had stabbed Motierre with it back in his time, and the pin she had stuck in Veryns shoulder had been coated by the poison too. Bricca knelt down and pulled the pin out. It was long and thin, like a knitting needle, and had penetrated deep into his flesh. She hoped it hadn't caused too much damage. For a moment she hesitated, wondering if she should give him the antidote now, but she still had to move the Archmage and deal with Ancano, and she did not want to leave the elf on his own when he woke up.

 

Bricca ended up dragging the Archmage as far as the dead skeevers, tossing him in between the frozen carcasses. He had been the main target of Ancano's explosion, which had thrown him all the way outside where he lay in the snow, his head under an angle that would have been impossible had he still been alive. Bricca searched through his clothes, taking some small pieces of valuable looking jewellery with her. Undoubtedly, it was enchanted and would fetch a good price at a Thieves' guild fence. When she sat with Ancano in the Archmage's quarters a good hour later, it turned out she wouldn't have to worry about money for a long, long time. Two hundred and fifty golden septims lay on the table, in neat rows of fifty each. A small fortune, enough to buy a house and live comfortably for the next couple of years. Bricca smirked as she heaped the gold into pouches. This was a nice reward for all the trouble she'd gone though. Already she couldn't wait to see Astrids face when she brought this back. While the Dark Brotherhood was by no standards poor, it was not swimming in gold either, and the septims would be welcome and put to good use.

 

"It is good to see the Dark Brotherhood live up to its reputation," Ancano spoke as he signed a letter to Astrid to conclude his deal. "I will make sure my superiors know so, too."

Bricca kept up her smile, and nodded at Ancano friendly, despite her wish to strangle the elf at the spot.

 

"That is great to hear," she answered, trying to keep her tone of voice light, pretending this was just another normal conversation between her and a client. "I am honoured by your recommendation."

 

It took far too long for the ink to dry, and Bricca started to feel more and more uncomfortable under Ancano's scrutinizing gaze and his attempt to keep up a conversation. She almost ran out of the door when the Thalmor was finally done, and sighed in relief once she had made the climb back to the midden. Veryn was lying exactly as she had left him. Bricca searched through his clothes, looking for any weapons he might have kept hidden on his body. His dagger was a nice weapon, with a handle in the shape of a horses head, but the blade was damaged and blunt, with ugly corrugated spots dotting its surface. She found two other knives, small ones, and took them with her, before forcing the antidote down his throat. Bricca had no idea how long it would take before it worked. In fact, she didn't know if it even worked at all. Slightly anxious she hid herself in a shadowy corner, hoping that the elf wasn't dead after all.

It took nearly half an hour before she noticed any effects, but then Bricca could hear a heart beating and a wheezing breath. Before long, Veryn regained consciousness by screaming in terror. Looking on in bewilderment and having no clue what to do Bricca watched him curl up on the floor, clawing at his head and whispering the same words over and over.

 

"Hey!" she called out softly, wondering if the elf had lost his mind. "Are you alright?"

Veryn only reacted by curling up further. " _Please_ ", she heard him say. " _Please, don't._ I'll tell you whatever you want. Just stop. Please. _Don't do this to me!_ " Only when she called out his name a few times the elf seemed to snap out of his panic. It took an eternity for him to stand up, shaking and swaying on his legs.

 

"Come to finish the job?"

 

He stared at her almost defiantly, his voice cracking. The dark elf looked dreadful. The skin around his eyes was red and swollen and his forehead was littered with small bloody gouges where he had raked it open. Bricca tried to think of something reassuring she could say, something friendly and soothing, but before she could do so Veryn lunged at her, slamming her head against the wall. Instinctively she pushed him away, causing him to crash to the ground again.

 

"Damn you! Just listen to me; I can explain this!"

 

The back of her head pounded painfully. The elf didn't listen and instead dragged himself to his feet again. He threw a ball of fire at her. It hit her robes and sizzled out. Bricca pressed her back against the wall, breathing in and out quickly while her stomach tried its hardest to squirm its way out of her body. _Fire._ She _hated_ fire, Sithis be damned. She barely managed to dodge a second fireball, shielding her face with her arms. Thank Mara that the college-issued robes she wore were enchanted against magical damage, lest an enthusiastic initiate accidentally explode himself. Immediately she wondered how long those enchants would hold now that they were being bombarded. Dodge the fire. Step aside. _Don't let it hit you_.

 

"Veryn, don't do this," she pleaded as more fire sheared past her right ear and almost took her hair with it.

 

Of course he didn't listen to that either. She edged towards him slowly, dancing between the endless flames that kept coming her way. Her breath caught in her throat when she was hit again. Her legs froze and she stood dazed for a few seconds. The awful heat tried to creep it's way up her robes, leaving the stench of charred leather in its wake. Veryn ran away from her again down the hall. Bricca had to admit she was impressed how he managed to stay on his legs, let alone keep casting spells. She could see he was weakening though, his casts faltering more often. He was terrified, his eyes wide and crazed, and when another fireball exploded on the ground just before her feet and the elf staggered and had to lean against the wall for support, Bricca made a break for it. She ran towards him, only to sit down on the ground a few seconds later, her eyes burning as Veryn had done his little trick with the flash of light again.

 

"You've got to be kidding me," she muttered, blindly making her way to the other side of the room. "Where'd you go?" Her face and hands burned as if she just had ducked them in scalding hot water. Wincing, she sat down for a few seconds until her sight cleared up. Meanwhile, she kept listening to her surroundings, and to the fast beating heart that was moving in the halls below her. As soon as she could see the faint outlines of the room again she started running after Veryn, ignoring the dizzying way the halls of the Midden spun around her. She followed the sound of the heart, running as fast as she could, her feet barely touching the ground. It was almost intoxicating to hunt, and it reminded her of running around the small villages of the Colovian Highlands with her coven, going in for the kill. When she caught sight of Veryn the elf was frantically trying to outrun her. Bricca smirked as she launched herself, landing on his back and slamming both of them on the stone beneath. She planted her knee on the elf’s back and wrenched his right arm on his back as well, twisting it up as far as possible, causing him to cry out in pain. With her free hand she bent back his hand, putting a fair amount of tension on his wrist.

 

"Use any magic again and I'll break it," Bricca said. "Do you understand?"

 

Veryn grunted, managing barely to force out a yes. He had stopped resisting now, seemingly in too much pain.

 

"What do you want from me?" he rasped, his voice far hoarser than usual. "Are you going to deliver me to Ancano?"

 

Bricca relaxed her grip on his arm slightly. "No. I want you to hear me out. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way to get you to listen."

 

The elf cringed and attempted to curl up again, trembling. Bricca sighed, shaking her head. This was useless. She moved her hand a little, touching as much skin as she could and then _forced_ him to listen to her, like she had done with Alain Dufont. Veryn was too weak to stop the magic and slumped to the ground, suddenly unnaturally calm. Bricca let go of his arm and  sat down against the wall, running her hands through her hair.

 

"Listen, I never had the intention of killing you, al right? Dark family doesn't kill dark family." She sighed again, smiling wryly. "It's all Astrid's fault that we're in this mess, anyway." Bit by bit she recounted how the matron had asked her to spy on Cicero and how the Night Mother had started to whisper to her. She told Veryn of how Astrid had become angry and had sent her away to the College to deal with Ancano.

 

"So you are the Listener now?" Veryn peered at her with narrowed eyes, his look vacant. He'd scrambled to the wall opposite her, huddling against the stone and cradling his arm.

 

Bricca nodded. "I am. And every time I try to ask her for advice She's being awfully silent thus far. At least Ancano was easy at the start. Just kill the Archmage, he said, and do it slowly. And so I did, poisoning him over the course of the last few months. But then, two weeks ago, he wanted me to kill you. He kept ranting about the damn Eye and about how you were a threat to him. I couldn't refuse him, he threatened the Sanctuary!" She stopped to take a breath. The skin on her arms was itching. _Blasted fire._

 

"Better to kill off one member than have everyone else dead too?"

 

"Yes." She grunted. "Believe me, if I could have stepped out I would. But I couldn't, so instead I tried to think of a way to work around Ancano's command and make sure you survived. It took me a while to find something. The pin I stabbed you with was coated with a poison, Languorwine. It caused you to become as good as dead. Right now, Ancano and everyone at the college thinks you're gone. Once his fellow Thalmor learn that you'll be entirely safe from them as well. We should head to the Sanctuary soon and-"

 

" _We?_ " Bricca shivered slightly at Veryns laughter when he interrupted her. Had the elf finally gone mad, or was he usually just very good at hiding his insanity?

 

"And what about the College,” he asked. “Did you make any room for that in your plans?"

 

For a moment she felt at a loss for words. "Well..." She shrugged. "It's been through worse, hasn't it?"

 

Veryn moved slightly. Bricca wondered if he was going to try and attack her again, but all he did was conjure a bit of magelight. He shook his head. "The College is as much of a home to me as the Sanctuary is to you. And now you have left it in the hands of a Thalmor." He looked sad, the way he sat hunched over against the wall, gazing up at her accusingly. "You didn't think of that. By Vehk, you could have talked to me instead of stabbing me in the back."

 

"Ancano only demanded that I killed you after you were gone to that ruin. I had no chance to talk to you."

 

"Do you even realize what you've done? Not only does Ancano have the College. He has the Eye as well. And in his hands, the Eye becomes a weapon. Somehow he found a way to use the powers of the Eye without using the Staff of Magnus. He found a way around it by channelling the magicka that has been built up in the College since it's existed. I don't know how long it will take until the wards start falling and all of the buildings here will crumble into the sea. Perhaps Ancano will figure out how to bend the Eye to his will first and hand it to the Thalmor. Then we'll have the second Great War on our hands."

 

Bricca fell silent for a while, mulling over what Veryn had just said. "The Dark Brotherhood doesn't judge," she said eventually. "We just do our contracts, regardless of what the effects are. But you, you're not going back to the Sanctuary, are you? You're not going to pretend you're dead."

 

"No." Veryn grinned, baring his teeth, a mad and mocking smirk that was exaggerated by his scars. "I'm not a little bird you can keep in a cage. Even if I came with you now I would have left the Sanctuary sooner or later. No, I'm heading to Labyrinthian to search for the Staff of Magnus so I can claim the Eye for myself and decipher it."

 

"That's the large haunted city near Morthal, isn't it? Travellers and caravans avoid it."

 

"I don't mind." Veryn stared off into the distance. "I'm not afraid of ghosts or draugr. If anything, confronting Ancano afterwards will be much worse."

 

"I could travel with you for a while," Bricca offered. She wasn't sure exactly why. "I am headed for the ruins of Volunruud myself."

 

That caught his attention. "I thought you wanted to go back to Falkreath?"

 

"The Night Mother told me there would be someone waiting for me at Volunruud. Astrid doesn't want me to go, but Astrid put me in this mess. I don't care about what she wants or not. If she hadn't been so damn upset none of this would have happened."

 

"And I would be dead." Veryn rubbed his shoulder, grimacing in pain. "At least you put in some effort to keep me alive. Thanks for that, I suppose. Did you bring my pack down here? I need it."

 

More than two hours later they stood at the edge of a tall cliff. Behind them was a narrow frozen path that led back into the Midden, and before them, at the foot of the cliff, the sea crashed against the rocks. Veryn shook his head.

 

"You said you knew the way out, but now you want us to go down _here_?"

 

"Yes." Bricca knelt down at a large pick driven deep between the rocks. She shoved some of the ice and gravel away to reveal a thick rope, almost the size of her fist, with even thicker knots running along it. "We can hardly walk out of here as if nothing happened. Going along those narrow bridges will make us a wonderful target for everyone, including Ancano."

 

"I know." Veryn scowled at the rocks. "You said that before. But climbing down? By Vehk, this will be _great._ "

 

He sounded bitter, and when she asked what was wrong he turned away in frustration.

 

"I can't climb. I can barely support my own weight after the Thalmor."

 

Bricca climbed down twice, taking first her own backpack and then Veryns. She waited at the bottom of the cliff, watching Veryn struggle to climb down ungraciously, hitting the jutting rocks every so often. He had managed to get about three-quarters down when she heard him grunt, and then yell in alarm. The elf was losing his grip on the rope, trying for a second to keep himself up with one hand before he slipped away. He fell down on the rocks, the snow softening his landing only a little. When Veryn sat up again he was clutching his shoulder.

 

“It hurt too much to continue.” His voice was hoarse and he seemed to holding back his tears.

 

Bricca winced. “I'm sorry. I stabbed you after all. Maybe I should have found another way out.”

 

The elf shook his head. “It's fine. It's not just the wound either. The Thalmor...” His expression darkened and he stared off over the sea. “They used to hang me from my wrists for hours. My joints and nerves are wrecked to the extent that magic can't fix them any more.”

 

He turned abruptly, grabbing his pack and heading off for the narrow track nearby. It was nothing more than some flattened and worn-out rocks that were now covered with a thin layer of frost. It took a while to cross them, slippery and dangerous, but in the end they reached the muddy hunting trail that led to Winterhold. They headed towards town to pick up their horses. Spring was coming, and as they rode away from Winterhold the weather turned gradually more depressing. The snows of winter had made way for endless chilling rains, and the roads had turned into a mush of half frozen ice, water and mud. Initially, the road ran to the south, but after a few days curved around the mountains and started running westward. On the right side it was guarded by steep cliffs, and on the left the sloping rocky terrain was rough and nigh impassible. High above, rising from the mountains, loomed the statue of Azura, facing to the east, to Morrowind. There were barely any inns or villages around and the road was almost entirely empty as well. Only after they passed the crossing where the road split towards Windhelm did they encounter more travelers. By now they were used to the solitude, so when they arrived at the Nightgate Inn they were taken by surprise. The place was packed and almost overflowing, and it was nearly impossible to get a room. They had to offer double the usual price for the innkeeper to agree to make room and stable their horses.

 

"The damn road is collapsed," he said. "Half a day from here. Can't complain though. Haven't had business like this in years."

 

The taproom was filled with traders, travellers and Stormcloaks. The latter sat clustered together, their cloaks and boots splattered with mud. They'd ridden here all the way from Windhelm to make the road accessible again. An avalanche had buried it under a thick layer of rubble, rocks and loose chunks of ice that had broken off from the small glacier above.

 

"Looks like we'll be stuck here for a while," Veryn said. Bricca rolled her eyes and sighed, wondering if the Night Mother had foreseen this too. Volunruud was days away, and with the road damaged those days might soon turn into weeks. At the back of the room, the Stormcloaks had started to sing, the local bard playing a familiar tune. _All hail to Ulfric, you are the High King!_ She looked away from them again. Obscenities and shoddy drawings were carved on top of the table she sat at, some covered by globs of wax from the thick, drooping candle in the middle. The flickering light played with the thick green glasses that held their ale, and idly Bricca wondered when the short pit would drown. Opposite her, Veryn was staring at the flame, hunched over and resting his fingertips against each other. Some of his fingers were almost as mangled as his face, with missing nails and mottled pink burns, and crooked joints where they had been broken. A sudden thought about the College came to her.

 

"Why do they call you lord around here? I know you're a thane of Whiterun, but a thane isn't a lord, not in Winterhold or the rest of Skyrim."

 

The elf slowly lifted his head, the candle reflecting in his eyes. He seemed taken aback by the question and took his fair time to think about it.

 

"I am a member of the Dunmer Great House Telvanni, and of high enough rank to own land within Morrowind," he finally said. He seemed avoidant, as if he didn't want to answer at all. Bricca couldn't see if he was lying, but she felt as if he didn't tell the whole truth. "My holdings there would make me a lord in the other parts of the Empire, and the mages of Winterhold are keen to call me that. But ever since Red Mountain erupted the lands have been destroyed and covered in ash, and as I was not in Morrowind at that time, they have been looted and plundered in the aftermath of the destruction." He grimaced. "The last time I was there, during the Great War, barely anything was left."

 

It was clear he did not wish to talk about it any more, and before long he headed off to the small and cramped room the Innkeeper had managed to free up. Bricca followed not long after. The elf had fallen asleep on top of the lumpy mattress and ratty blankets. Bricca lighted the oil lamp and took a map from her pack, spreading it out on the rickety wooden table. She'd taken it from the Arcaneum, and it showed the majority of Skyrim, with all the holds borders and major Imperial roads marked in red ink. By now the once so great stone roads had fallen prey to the weather and the war, but they still were a much better choice than the muddy tracks that ran along the countryside and the host of small towns. But the Imperial roads went the wrong way, and none of them passed even close to Volunruud. She followed some of the lines with her fingers. There were some paths running south from the Nightgate Inn, towards a giant's camp and then curving off both towards the Pale and Eastmarch.

 

"It might work," she muttered too loudly, pulling the lamp closer.

 

"What does?" Veryn squinted at her sleepily.

 

"Going south through the wilderness. It will take longer than taking the road, and there's giants and mammoths, but I don't care about idling here for what might be weeks."

 

"Can I see?" He walked over to her to study the map. Bricca tried not to stare at the jagged ridges that criss-crossed Veryns arms and shoulders or the gnarled mess of scar tissue covering most of his back. Despite the warmth of the inn he was shivering badly.

 

"How's your shoulder?" she asked, peering at the small, scabbed over wound.

 

The elf scratched his shoulder. "It's healing." He pointed at a splotch of ink on the map, his fingers twitching and unable to stay still. "That is Volunruud? How do you even know there's someone waiting for you?"

 

"The Night Mother said there would be."

 

"And if there isn't? The Night Mother spoke to you months ago."

 

"Motierre will be there." _He had to be_. Astrid would be so amused if Bricca went to visit Volunruud for nothing. "The Night Mother showed me how the ruin looks." She hoped that the image of a domed tomb sticking out from the snow that sprang in her mind whenever she thought of Volunruud was indeed the right place. She looked up at Veryn again, who was swaying on his legs. His fingertips were white where he gripped the table in an attempt not to fall over.  “ _Are you alright?”_

 

“ I – yes.” He staggered back to the edge of the bed and sat down, rubbing his head. “I just need  some moon sugar.  I ran out and -”

 

Bricca snorted derisively. “So you're an addict?”

 

“No!”  He glared at he r. “No. I only use it to kill the pain in my head and hands. Astrid never set the bones right when she healed me.”  He flexed his left hand, but Bricca could see he was unable to fully stretch his fingers.  “This isn't your business,” he said through clenched teeth. “ Just leave me be.”

 

“I'm only trying to help you,” she said softly.

 

“You tried to _kill_ me.”

 

“Would you rather have I did?” She grinned when she saw him tense. He did not answer her and stood up again, pacing up and down the room anxiously before looking at the map again.

 

“Labyrinthian lies here, at this mountain pass.” Veryn held his finger at some mountains not far from Volunruud. “Regardless of what you're doing, I'll take that south road tomorrow and get that staff.”

 

The next morning Bricca joined Veryn for breakfast. The elf had managed to get in a few more hours of broken sleep and was now listlessly picking at his food. He was still shivering and had dark circles under his eyes. He looked at her, the suspicion from the evening before gone, and didn't object when she followed him to the stables afterwards. By the time Bricca had saddled Shadowmere, Veryn was shaking badly enough to nearly fall from his horse.

 

“I think,” he said, teeth clattering, “that I'll ride with you to Volunruud. I'd like to see if the Night Mother was right.”

 

“Can you ride like this? You seem ill.” Bricca still felt bad about what had happened under the college. Veryn had quiet since then, and visibly anxious, not unlike the first months he had been with the Brotherhood.

 

“I don't get ill.” Veryn ducked away in his cloak, his hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. “I never do. This is because of the moon sugar. I couldn't grab more from the college before we had to leave. I've been through withdrawal before. It's awful, but it might get better in a few days.”

 

Bricca didn't push the subject any further. Veryn had told her yesterday it wasn't her problem, and as long as he kept up with her he would be right about that.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

Unlike what the Night Mother had shown her, the entrance to Volunruud wasn't covered in snow, but a muddy drab. Like most ancient Nord tombs, the shape of the entrance reminded Bricca of a pot: a dome with a stone staircase leading down to a hollowed out middle, where a door led to the burial sites hiding underground.

 

"This is it," Bricca said. She left Shadowmere to his own devices. The Daedric horse objected heavily to being tied to a tree, and he wouldn't wander off too far away. Mud covered the inside of the ruin too, causing her boots to make squishy noises. Veryn followed after her, his breathing ragged. While he was clearly doing better than two weeks ago when he'd run out, the lack of moon sugar was visibly causing him pain and exhaustion. Astrid could never have intended for this to happen when she sent Bricca out to the College, but it wasn't Astrid now who had to ensure they both came home alive and well. Bricca went into the first hallway on the left, the one from her vision, Veryn coming immediately after and then through the dried out well, guided by the Night Mothers black hands. She laughed softly when she opened the rotting door and stood face to face with two Imperials. One of them was dressed like a nobleman, although his clothes had suffered under the Skyrim weather, and the other wore the standard Imperial armour: a leather breastplate and skirt, both plated with steel, and high steel greaves that reached to his knees. A gladius hung loosely at his hip, but once he spotted the two coming in he stepped forward with a bared longsword.

 

"What do you want?" The guard was at least two heads larger than Bricca and broadly built. "Who are you?"

 

"The Night Mother has answered your prayers." Such a simple sentence, but the effect was huge. The nobleman scooted away from behind his bodyguard. Amaund Motierre had the pale skin and slightly pointed ears of a Breton, but the heavy-set facial features and thick dark hair of an Imperial. He had a puffy face with sagging cheeks, and was cleanly shaven.

 

"You've come! You've actually come! And within a day too! This dreadful Black Sacrament, it worked!" Motierre's voice was surprisingly high, and did not fit his look at all.

 

"The Night Mother hears everything, Amaund." Bricca smiled at him, satisfied to see him suck in a whistling breath. He was scared, his head bobbing up and down as he spoke.

 

"We – we've only been here for a day! Yesterday we did that dreadful ritual... and now you're here already. I-well, I would like to arrange a contract. Several contracts, actually, culminating in something that might well have more significance than anything your organization has done in centuries." Motierre swallowed, although speaking had appeared to give him some confidence at least. Bricca motioned for him to go on, keen to hear any details. Putting the Dark Brotherhood back on the map could never be a bad thing. "As I said, there are multiple targets, and I'm sure you'll find them to be quite, well, varied." Motierre gave a fake little cough. "I'm sure someone like you might find it even... well, enjoyable. But these targets I speak of, they are all but a means to an end. The end of the most important target. The reason why I came to this filthy pit to speak with cut-throats like the two of you." He glanced up and down between Bricca and Veryn, ill at ease, his eyes darting from left to right. "What I seek is the assassination... of the Emperor."

 

Motierre smiled nervously. Bricca stared at him. The Emperor. Did he truly say _the Emperor_?

 

"It is a shocking request, I know. But you are the Dark Brotherhood. This, this is what you do, right? You must understand, so much has led to this day. So much planning, so much manoeuvring, and now the day has finally come to arrange the kills."

 

Bricca smiled back at the man. "Business is business." Her voice sounded a lot more confident and calm than she felt. The Emperor! Indeed, the Dark Brotherhood hadn't killed a target like that in centuries, and especially not after it had fallen into decline. Would they even be able to off the Emperor at all? "We ask half of the pay up front."

 

Motierre fidgeted. "Rexus! The items.”

 

His bodyguard walked over and handed Motierre a thin leather bag. In it were a sealed scroll and an amulet, diamond-shaped and made of gold, with a pink stone set inside an eight-pointed star.

 

"The scroll contains further instructions for your superior. The amulet is very valuable. You can use it to pay for any and all expenses."

 

Bricca reached for the amulet, studying it closely. "How valuable is valuable?"

 

Motierre licked his lips. "Five thousand septims at the least. And if the contract is fulfilled and the Emperor dies you will be rewarded with a fee of twenty thousand septims."

 

Behind her, she heard Veryn mutter something in suprise. " _Twenty thousand?_ " she asked, incredulous. It was a ridiculous amount of gold, enough to buy a title and land and rise to nobility, and then have some gold left over too. She thought of the two hundred and fifty Ancano had paid her. Divines, that paled to what Motierre promised. So this was what the Night Mother wanted?

 

Motierre nodded. "In hard coin, for the Dark Brotherhood to spend as it wishes." Bricca saw the little nobleman smirk when he read her expression. He had her, and the Dark Family that surrounded her. Emperor Titus Mede II would die.


	8. Wrath of the Lich Priest

**Chapter VIII**

 

_Wrath of the Lich Priest_

* * *

 

"I've always wanted to visit this place once," Veryn said as they stood on a hill overlooking the stone city. "But maybe under different circumstances. Still, it's great to be here. Labyrinthian is _ancient_ and full of magic. Did you know that back in the Imperial Simulacrum a piece of the Staff of Chaos was hidden here? Everything must have been as abandoned as it is now. It's been that way since the second era at least. Before it fell to ruin, Shalidor built his famous labyrinth here and even earlier it was the greatest city in all of Skyrim. It was the crown on the work of the dragon cultists and now it's nothing."

"You seem to know a lot of history." Bricca said. She looked out over the crumbled buildings below, the many unfamiliar terms Veryn used going right over her head. She wondered why the city had been abandoned. Labyrinthian must once have been as large as Solitude, with snowed-under foundations reaching as far as the eye could see. The outskirts had been plucked empty throughout the years, stripped from their stone and timber. Still, numerous arches rose up in the sky, with majestic stone birds and dragons carved into them, but the statues were damaged, with missing tails and heads. The place breathed something desolate, with the only unscathed building set high in the mountainside, towering above everything else.

"There are a lot of books in Winterhold about Labyrinthian," Veryn said. "I've read some throughout the years. One day, I'd like to come back here to do some proper research with the College. Bring a team, some students to do the digging." He stared at the large building thoughtfully. "If I had to wager a guess, the Staff of Magnus is hidden either in there or in the labyrinth. Since I don't know where the labyrinth is we should head towards that temple." He turned to look at Bricca. "Are you still adamant about coming along?"

She smiled. "I wouldn't want you to die in there after all the trouble I went to keep you alive."

Veryn rolled his eye. "I'll be fine."

"You said that too when you kept nearly falling off your horse on the way to Volunruud."

The elf huffed in annoyance and rode down, Bricca following laughing.

The temple was surprisingly hard to reach. Slippery stones and broken stairs caused them to proceed on foot, until they reached a flat stone porch with an enormous round stone door. It was elaborately carved, with intricate swirling patterns set in relief, and it completely sealed off any access to the inside.

"This was done by magic." Veryn frowned at the door, moving his hand over it. "Someone warded the whole place. I'm not strong enough to -"

"Sh!" Bricca interrupted him and pointed to the porch where they came from, her right hand on a dagger. Six ghostly figures now stood there talking to each other, their voices too thin to hear what they were saying. The sunlight passed through their bodies as if they weren't there at all. She studied them from a distance, shielding her eyes from the bright light. One Argonian, two humans and three elves. She briefly looked at their faces, but lingered at one bearded male dark elf, nudging Veryn in the side.

"Is that the late Archmage?"

Veryn squinted, startled. "If it's him, he is awfully young, twenty-five if that. He's too pale to be a ghost, too incorporeal. They must be shades of a past event." He frowned. "Something happened here that was significant to the Archmage. A while ago, he handed me a stone ring, some magical artefact, to keep safe. I think we're about to find out what he has to do with this place. If that shade is him, he must have known the staff was here after all."

He knelt down, taking something from his pack, and then held up a large ring with both hands.

Bricca walked closer, inspecting the carvings on the torque.

"It looks like the door," she said. "I think it's a key. Do you see that head in the middle? I think it's supposed to fit in there."

The head was weathered with age and it was impossible to tell what it had once depicted, but on both sides of its snout were holes, large enough for the sides of the torque. It seemed impossible at first to get the torque to fit in, but the wards on the door took over once they held it near and snapped it in place. With a grinding sound, the large stone door split in half and allowed access to the dark hall beyond. Bricca looked back to the ruined city. Shadowmere had already found herself a rabbit to devour, while Veryn's mare trotted behind her docilely. When she looked at the place where the ghosts had been she saw that they were gone.

As she set foot into the entry hall it became clear where the ghosts had gone. They re-appeared for a few seconds in front of a large door, and their chatter sounded excited.

Everything about Labyrinthian breathed something old and ancient. Faces of dragons and other animal leered down at them, carved high into stone pillars or the vaulted ceiling. Some of the walls were covered in ruined banners and tapestries, depicting battles and kings from ages past. From the entry hall they ventured into an even greater hall, so high Bricca could not see the ceiling. A few skeletons shambled around, easily killed by a firebolt. In the middle of the room however, dust was whirling up from a large earthen tomb. With a low, rumbling sound the earth cracked open, revealing a magnificent horned skull. Bricca watched in fascination how the skull rose up and how two large, tattered wings dragged an enormous, skeletal dragon out of its grave. The beast was nothing but bones and rotted tissue, smelling of earth and decay. It let out a screech, trying to flap its wings and fly up, but they could no longer bear the dragon into the sky. Bricca backed off, dashing away when it snapped at her.

"So _this_ is a dragon?" she asked, gaping at the size.

"It used to be. This... this is necromancy. A reanimated body, without a soul." Veryn shook his head in disgust. "I think I can undo the magic keeping him together, but you should try and keep it's attention." He threw himself to the left, barely dodging a blast of ice the dragon spat at them. Bricca danced away to the right, reaching out with her blades, only to see them scrape off the bone, doing no damage at all. She tried to hack at the dragons brittle joints, yelling at it to keep it's attention. The beast was surprisingly stupid, stumbling around blindly and spewing frost at whatever source of sound it could hear.

"Sithis," she muttered under her breath, trying to lure the dragon back into the pit, jabbing at its toes. She had managed to pry a few small bones loose, which now crawled listlessly through the dust on their own. She hoped Veryn knew what he was doing, she thought as she rolled away from the spiked tail the dragon swiped at her. To keep this thing busy was easier said than done. She kept yelling at the undead beast, rolling around through the dirt to stay out of its reach. Once it nearly pinned her with its claw, but Veryn Shouted at the dragon from the other side of the hall. As it staggered she drove the longest of her blades though the fragile membrane of its wing. The dragon screeched and trashed when she dragged the dagger on, tearing part of the wing in two. Dodging another large claw that threatened to pin her to the ground she leapt at the other wing, slamming a dagger into one of the joints before wrenching it as hard as she could. The dragon bucked, trying to throw her off. Bricca jumped back down, breaking her fall with a roll. She sneezed when she landed, and when she held up her hand a thin layer of fine dust settled on her glove. The dragon was _crumbling_ , its bones turning to dust as Veryn had undone the enchantment that had revived it in the first place. With a loud crash, the skeleton collapsed under its own weight, breaking apart in the pit and showering her with bones and bone dust. Veryn stood at the edge of the pit, glowing with magic and breathing fast, a look of triumph on his marred face. Bricca shook her head in disbelief, dusting off her clothes and armour. The bone grit had managed to settle down everywhere, making her hair itch, her eyes burn and her nose feel clotted.

"You killed some of those things on your own, when they were _alive?_ "

Veryn merely nodded, walking down. "They're usually larger. And smarter. Although with almost all of them I had others help me out." He rummaged though the bones. "This one must have been raised by a powerful necromancer or a lich. The dragon that destroyed Helgen, he raises the other dragons that are buried outside, but those have souls. This one doesn't have one anymore."

Bricca thought of Martin for a moment. Martin Septim, the Emperor's bastard kid who had ended the Oblivion Crisis by turning into a dragon of pure golden light. Compared to him, those new dragons were vile and ugly creatures.

When they moved on, deeper into the ruin, Bricca saw the ghosts again, gathered around an old stone tablet. Only five of them were left, with the sixth nowhere in sight. As she moved closer to the tablet she heard a strange voice coming out of nowhere, in a language she couldn't understand, and the magelight of Veryn who was scouting ahead disappeared. She heard the elf yell in sudden surprise, an edge of panic in his voice. She hurried down the stairs towards him, making sure to keep her torch alight. She felt like she had been drenched in ice water ever since the lights went out. Then a slight flickering below told he that Veryn had likely lit a torch as well.

"What just happened?" she yelled.

"Magic." Veryn looked pale and shaken, afraid even. "The lich spoke something in the dragon tongue and then took our magicka away. I can't cast any more so my magelight went out."

Bricca tried to reach in the distance with her mind to see if he was right. The small amount of magicka she had continuously used at the College was gone, filled with a faint hollow.

"To you, magic is a tool," Veryn said quietly. "To me, it is a sense."

They spent the night in a small side room. In a far past, it must have been used to prepare bodies, as evident from the chests with rolls of dried-out bandages, now so thin and brittle they crumbled at Bricca's touch. The rusted tools hanging from the wall had stained the stone a filthy brown, with water leaking from somewhere high up at the ceiling. Some of the chests and cracked chairs ended up in a rough pyramid, with Veryn kneeling down at it and trying to get a small fire started with flint and tinder. Bricca waited through the night listlessly. Labyrinthian had been shut off from the outside for so long that most vermin inside had died off. She plucked some spiders from a corner, nearly gagging on the taste when she bit on them. The few drops of blood in each weren't enough to satisfy her hunger. Not by far. Bricca kicked the dying fire, leaping back as a shower of embers flew up and then peered at the furs on which Veryn had finally fell asleep, still clutching his head in pain. Why couldn't she have just a taste? Would he even notice? Jumpy as the elf was, he would, and it would destroy the last bit of trust he had in her. She left him behind, heading to a deep chasm close by, criss-crossed by overgrown bridges. Some of them crumbled dangerously when she jumped towards them, sending handfuls of loose rocks and dirt down, crashing in the water with faint splashes. The water would have fish, hopefully. Perhaps there were even small beasts. As she dove down, ready to land on a large sunken staircase, the strange voice sounded again, now speaking in heavily accented Imperial.

"You do not answer... must I use this guttural language of yours?"

Bricca froze at the spot immediately when her boots made contact with the ground and started listening intently. There were some fish in the water all right, but she could not find any sign of the lich. _He's not alive._ It was easy to track the living, but not so much to find the dead. Carefully she moved down to the waters edge, still intently watching her surroundings. Her belly gnawed when she saw the pale fishes swim around, mangy and thin things. With a grab, fast as lightning, she plucked one out of the water, biting down hard and savouring the sweet taste of blood. She reached for another fish, draining it fully and then tossed the carcass back into the water. Within seconds a slaughterfish shot out from a crack between some rocks and devoured the remains.

The next day they travelled further along the underground river, until the point where they had to wade through. Before this part of the ruin had flooded there had been a tunnel, but now the water stood a few foot high and rushed through a broken door.

"Have you returned, Aren? My old friend?"

The lich again.

"So the Archmage had something to do with this for sure then."

Veryn shook his head. "I don't know what he has been up to in here, but I doubt it has been any good. I think he tried to get the staff... and failed."

The water split into narrow streams, most of them dying off after a while or meandering away through cracks in the wall. One of the streams ended at a bloodied pit, filled with bones, that turned out to be the nest of an emaciated troll. A small side way led to a high cavern with crumbling fortifications and more trolls, gnawing on the remains of a skeever. A pungent stench caused both Veryn and Bricca to quickly back off. The trolls had tangled and mouldy pelts, and their lairs were covered with rotting bits and pieces of flesh and meat. Clearly, this was where a large part of the vermin in Labyrinthian had ended up. They sneaked past, moving on towards an ancient city gate when the lich interfered with them again.

"You... you are not Aren, are you? Has he sent you in his place?"

The sudden sensation of being doused in freezing water returned. She saw Veryn nearly fall to his knees, suddenly turning pale. He tried to shake her off, insisting that everything was fine, but gladly accepted her offer to take a break an hour later. They climbed on top of some ruined battlements, looking out over a large graveyard. Small blue lights danced around the headstones, flickering on and off in the darkness.

"Wisps," Veryn said, nearly breathless, leaning back against a pillar. "We need to make sure we don't start to follow them."

The dancing lights proved to be almost mesmerizing. Bricca smiled when she saw Veryn drift off to sleep, head resting on his shoulder. She shifted uncomfortably. The faint hunger she had stilled with the fishes started to grow worse again. If the trolls had caught living food, she could do so too. She left Veryn behind again, taking just a torch as she walked down towards the graveyard. The wisps made high, chiming sounds as she passed them, like the small crystal bells and chimes the high elves used to make music. The ground bounded softly under her feet, covered with a thick layer of moss. The graves all around were ancient, too worn to read, but the carvings on the stone were those of dragons. She walked along them, ignoring the wisps as best as she could. In the far distance, she heard the soft beating of a heart. Bricca quickened her step, trying to haste herself to the source of the sound. Her torch made a sizzling sound when a wisp passed through it and then extinguished. She didn't notice. Her surroundings were lit by the wisps, giving off a soft blue light, and her ears would guide her to her prey. Maybe Veryn was mistaken about the wisps after all. They were harmless. She stretched out her hand and watched one land on her fingers, pulsing for a few seconds before drifting off. She walked and walked until she could almost feel the heartbeat pulsing with her fingers. Climbing a pair of wooden stairs led her to a stone platform, lit by a strange ethereal light. She headed for her prey, but when she was halfway she felt something icy wrap around her, like chains of frost. As she turned around on the spot she saw a woman floating towards her, prettier than she could have imagined someone to be. The woman smiled and opened her arms as if to embrace Bricca. She smiled back at the woman, convinced that the prey would be a gift, a reward for coming all the way here.

Then a lantern crashed onto the floor where the ghostly woman hovered, and the creature let out a shriek that seemed to turn Bricca's insides to ice. The lantern oil splashed up as it fell, leaving small burning puddles all over the floor. Bricca recoiled from them, the spell that had caught her broken. The woman, seeming so friendly only minutes ago, now looked as old and ugly as a hag, with hair spun of ice and mist wrapped around her body. The lantern had set her aflame, and she continued with that high, awful screech. On a ledge high above Bricca saw a dark figure, and then it jumped down, following the path of the lantern. She watched breathlessly how Veryn took on the monstrous woman, lashing out with his torch to keep her at bay. He set the wisps on fire too, and each time one of them was reduced to a charred husk the screaming intensified. The freezing grip fell away from Bricca and she rolled away from the fire, unsheathing her weapons now that she could move freely again. She ran towards the woman who had now unleashed her frost magic on Veryn and stabbed it with both weapons in the back. The screaming stopped abruptly, and one by one the wisps fell to the ground, gradually darkening the ruins around them. The mist-like wrappings curled up and fell to the ground too as the spirit within disappeared like smoke.

"That," Veryn said, "was a Wispmother. Quite different from the little will-o-the-wisps you find in Cyrodiil. The wisps enchanted us and lured you away." He kicked at the wrappings on the ground. "You all right?"

Bricca took a shuddering breath, remembering how much she had wanted the Wispmother to come to her. "Just a bit shaken. What do these things _want_ with you?"

"They drain you. Your life, your energy, your magicka, everything. They feed on it, and when they are done they turn what is left into a wisp to serve them."

Only when they walked back Bricca saw the death and decay in the graveyard. Wooden scaffolding stood all along the graves, loaded with rotted coffins. A great part of the graves was opened, and the springy ground now crunched under her feet, covered in bones.

"Come. Face your end." The lich welcoming words echoed through a damp tunnel. They had just passed Aren's shades again, now only four left, looking and sounding very upset. It was as if every part of Labyrinthian did its utmost best to keep them away from unearthing what was within. The deeper they went, the more ghostly draugr, skeletons and hounds did the ruin send at them down the narrow halls. One corridor was trapped with rows of soul gems, firing spikes of frost at everyone that came close. Bricca resorted to knocking them off with stones, shattering the gems on the floor. They passed a wall, a skeleton hanging from it in rusted shackles, that depicted a detailed relief of a masked man with flaming swords, with other, hooded people bringing him tribute. The decorations continued, culminating in a large, half-round wall, not unlike that in the Sanctuary. This one was undamaged though, with a large carved dragon watching over the scratches carved in the stone. Veryn knelt down, running his fingers over them.

"These walls.. they contain Shouts in the dragon language. These scratches were made by the dragons long ago to preserve their history. I can read it, but not easily. But the Shouts, I can feel those." He closed his eyes and grinned. The wall glowed brightly for a second, and then the light spread around Veryns hand like thin tendrils, sinking into his skin and then disappearing. Bricca looked around alarmed, hoping the bright light hadn't alarmed anything near.

Then, finally, they reached another cavern, clearly the oldest part of the ruin thusfar. Trapped in a large ward floated the lich, clutching a staff, while two of the shades that had been with the Archmage kept the ward intact. Veryn shook his head.

"Gods, Savos. He must've bound their souls to this place, trapping them here forever to keep the lich at bay, and then sealed off Labyrinthian from the outside world. The only way to break through this ward and get the staff is to free the shades, which will unleash the lich on us."

Bricca stared at the ward. It was solid as thick glass and did not budge when she put her hand on it.

"I don't think this is a mere lich," she said slowly. "His clothes and mask are the same as the ones on the relief on the wall." She smiled nervously. "Just how badly do you need that staff?"

At that moment one of the two channellers fell forward, burning up into a pile of ash. The beam of his magic disappeared and Bricca's hand sunk into the ward, denting it slightly. Veryn stood near where the shade had stood, dagger drawn.

"Ready for the other one?"

_No_ , she wanted to say. _This is madness._ Still, she nodded, shouting a yes back.

The second channeller died as fast as the first one, and the ward fell. Immediately, lightning arced across the sky, hitting Veryn and throwing him off the edge he stood on. The lich laughed and turned around, firing his staff at Bricca. She dodged the beam and kept moving in a circle, hoping to find an opening between the crackling beams. She stabbed him once, twice, but it barely seemed to hurt him. Veryn soon joined her, blood running down his face where some of his scars had cracked open again. He Shouted at the lich, throwing it back somewhat, and then leapt at it, trying to get a hold of the staff. He grabbed it for a few seconds before the lich threw him off with another surge of lightning.

"Move away!" Veryn yelled. "The staff, get his staff! It gives him magicka!" The elf was casting again, levitating a large piece of rock. Bricca jumped back, watching the boulder crash into the lich at full force, knocking it to the ground. She ran at it, diving down and wrenching her dagger between its elbow joint. With a harsh jerk she broke it off, pulling the staff away, skeleton hand still attached. Immediately the world became sharper. It was as if she was relying on her vampiric senses, but far more overwhelming. Her sight was _too_ sharp, Veryns presence too strong. Feeling him cast nearly made her throw up at the spot. There was raw power within her grasp, a vast amount of magicka for her to use, but Bricca lacked the training and finesse to handle it. Instead, she did the only thing that seemed sensible to her, to ignore the magicka entirely and wield the staff in both hands, blocking the lich's attacks and smashing the ends of the staff into his bones. Step by step, the lich fell back, pelted by magic missiles, having lost both his staff and arm. She yelled for Veryn to come closer, and as he did she threw the staff at him, hurling herself to the ground to avoid the lich's lightning. For an instant it seemed to hit Veryn yet again and he backed off in terror, holding up the staff as if to protect himself. The crystal on top of it glowed, and then lightning flew the other way too, colliding in mid-air with that of the lich. The monster snarled, shouting wildly in his old, forgotten language, and then fell forward when Bricca jumped on its back, stabbing it wherever she could, tearing at muscle and jamming her knife into his spine. Lightning sizzled at her clothes and skin, stinging and tingling where it hit. She rolled away again to avoid the spells, and watched how the lich rose into the air, soundlessly shrieking as fire devoured its robes and licked at its skull. Veryn kept the staff pointed directly at the creature, channelling all elements at the same time. Lightning struck out of nowhere, a torrent of ice shards whirled around the lich and chipped at his body. His mask melted, the metal running down the charred bone of his face in thick globs, and then the bone melted too, the lich trashing around wildly as the fire consumed him. As sudden as the fight had begun, it ended, with a smouldering pile of ash and bones lying in the middle of the room.

Bricca climbed up, wincing at the bruises and scrapes that undoubtedly covered her from head to toe after being thrown around that often. Veryn stood breathless over the lich's remains, clenching the staff in his hands and staring down at it. The Staff of Magnus was longer than he was, made apparently of a delicately carved wood, but when Bricca had held it it felt almost like cold metal. Three long, sharp claws reached out on the top to hold an orb in place, made of a cloudy, very bright blue glass.

"You did it," Bricca said. "I didn't think you would make it this far."

Veryn laughed, wincing as he wiped the blood off his face. " _We_. I couldn't have killed him alone. And neither could Savos."

He pointed the staff towards a single, faint shade near a pair of doors, its head lowered and hands folded in prayer.

"I'm so sorry, my friends." The words floated around like a whisper. "It was the only choice I had. I needed to make sure that the monster never escaped. I promise you, I'll never let this happen again! I'll seal this whole place away..."

The shade of Savos Aren walked off and disappeared. Bricca shook her head.

"He messed up, didn't he? At least he gave you the key in the end. So, what do we do now?"

Veryn grinned again, admiring the staff between his hands.

"I am going to pay a visit to Ancano. You should head back to the Sanctuary. The people of the College won't take too kindly to seeing you around. Besides..." He narrowed his eyes, a dangerous glint appearing. "This one is mine."


	9. Call of Magic

**Chapter IX**

_Call of Magic_

 

* * *

 

Two days after Veryn had passed the Nightgate Inn and the now newly repaired road the weather turned around. Before it had been chilly and dry, but overnight the temperature dropped several degrees. When he tried to head outside his tent the next morning the world was gone, replaced by a uniform layer of thick snow. The sky was so darkened with falling flakes it might have been night for all he knew. He could barely see a thing, even if he used the Staff of Magnus to conjure the brightest magelight he had ever seen. Hiding in his cloak, hood drawn far over his face and scarf pulled up high over his nose, Veryn rode off, following the stone cairns with tattered strips of cloth the Nords used to mark the road. Riding went on a snails pace for hours, until the cairns brought him up high in the mountains. Veryn halted his mare, squinting into the distance, but all he saw was endless grey dotted with white. The wind was picking up and chased the snow past him, piling it up in high banks. He had taken a wrong turn somewhere. This was not the road to Winterhold at all. He cursed, flexing his toes and fingers in a vain effort to get some feeling back. Even with the Staff of Magnus he couldn't go against a snowstorm. It was quite possible that this particular road led to one of the many small fishing villages that dotted the coast between Dawnstar and Winterhold. At least that would mean a roof above his head and a warm fire. If he stopped here, he would probably snow in in his tent, or freeze to death while asleep. Neither looked like an attractive prospect. When night fell he kept going on, guiding his horse past the snow banks and deep ditches at the side of the road, cursing the ever growing pulses of pain piercing his skull. The storm lessened slightly and in the distance he saw small lights flicker on and off. When Veryn neared them, he saw they were small fires. Behind them, something large and dark rose up from the mountains, becoming greater and greater the closer he came. Only once a series of stone platforms became vaguely visible he realized he had stumbled upon the shrine of Azura. He shivered. Had the Daedra been planning anything?

"Veryn."

He looked over his shoulder immediately when his name was called out, readying magic to defend himself. A Dunmer woman stood in the opening of a nearby yurt, her red eyes glowing in the dark.

"I am glad to see you have returned here," she said.

Veryn dismounted, leading his horse closer.

"I got lost in the storm. I didn't _intend_ to come here."

He had visited the shrine on occasion during the time he had spent at Winterhold. The woman who now stood at her yurt was called Aranea and she had been tending to the shrine ever since the Red Year. He had not paid the shrine a second thought when he had returned to Winterhold a few months ago. If Azura had ignored him at Northwatch keep, why would she answer his questions now? He rubbed his head. Gods, he missed having moon sugar nearby to dull the constant ache.

"I am sorry to hear what happened to you," Aranea said. "Still, you should come in and spend the remainder of the night here. This is no weather to be outside."

How did she know, he wondered as he led his horse to a dry part of the stairs, taking off her saddle and reins. Inside the yurt, a large fire burned. Thankful, Veryn stripped off his wet cloak and boots and huddled near the flames. Aranea walked to a large silver scrying bowl, with Daedric runes etched into it and slowly rotated it, looking at the moving water.

"Do you seek the counsel of Azura?"

Veryn shook his head, staring moodily at the flames. "No. She hasn't spoken to me since last year. Perhaps she still holds a grudge about something, I don't know. It's disheartening." He narrowed his eyes as he looked at Aranea. "Considering everything I have done in her service, it would have been nice if she helped me out."

"Sometimes, the Daedra work in ways a mortal cannot see," she answered. "I am sure that despite your trials, She still watches over you."

Veryn closed his eyes. "Nice words, but I haven't noticed much of it lately." He heard her move behind him and tensed up involuntary, but all Aranea did was lay a blanket across his shoulders. His fingers were tingling as the fire warmed them up and he could feel a faint throbbing in the bones. It was a pity he didn't have any moon sugar to fall asleep with. Aranea reached out and touched the back of his head. He winced, trying to pull away, but the only thing she did was cast a spell. The persistent headache disappeared, suddenly leaving his head clear.

"I wish I could do more," she said as she sat down next to him. "This should give you a few days respite."

_Ancano._

"A few days should be enough, if the weather clears up. If I head down to Winterhold as soon as possible, it won't be long until I can finally claim the Eye."

Gaining control of the great artefact did not seem as important any more, not to the extent of killing Ancano and ridding the College of the Thalmor. With Ancano gone, he could almost pretend it was home again.

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

Three days later, when he walked into the Frozen Hearth, Winterhold's one and only inn, he realized for the first time just how badly the town had taken the fall of the College. The streets looked depopulated without the many wizards around and the innkeeper complained loudly about the lack of traders ever since the news had spread. Tolfdir and some of his other friends were sitting in a corner, looking completely exhausted. They were the only ones left. Even the mages that hung around in Winterhold but weren't a part of the College proper were gone, headed off to other countries to try their luck. Veryn kept his hood cast over his face when he walked close to the table. He tapped Tolfdir on the shoulder, waiting for the old man to look up.

"Don't pull too much attention to me," Veryn whispered. "I don't need the entire town to know I am here."

Tolfdirs eyes turned as big as saucers.

"You – but we saw you die," he said, his throat hoarse.

"No," Veryn answered. "You saw me get stabbed." Together with Aranea he had plotted throughout the night, trying to decide on the best course of action. "I survived, as was the plan all along." He looked at the people sitting at the table that were now openly staring at him, whispering as they recognized the damned scarring on his face. He looked at each of them and then sat down, frowning. "Where is Mirabelle?"

Tolfdirs face dropped and the others fell silent.

"She didn't make it," Arniel said at last. "She went back into the College to confront Ancano, alone and did not come back out."

"Damn it." Veryn sighed, resting his forehead on his knuckles. While Mirabelle had not been a close friend of him, she had been a likeable woman. The College had been her everything and he felt saddened to hear of her death. After raising a glass to her memory, the group of mages swamped Veryn with questions. He tried to answer them as well as he could, sticking to the story that his faked death had been planned along between him and Bricca. In the end, they bought it, albeit some more than the others and eventually only Tolfdir was looking at him sceptically. The old man knew him too well, but at least he didn't challenge the lies. Then Veryn placed his staff on the table, holding on to it protectively. It was time.

"I retrieved the Staff of Magnus."

"Where did you find it?" Tolfdir looked at him impressed.

"Deep in Labyrinthian. I paid the assassin to come with me. A good thing I did, because we faced a dragon priest."

"They're supposed to be dead," Arniel Gale interjected. "Unless they are coming back, just like the dragons themselves?"

"He was a lich. I don't think he ever really died. He must have been waiting in Labyrinthian for ages." Veryn left out that Savos Aren had been there before and had been responsible for leaving behind two of his friends, magically bound to trap the lich for eternity. Through the years, Aren must have suffered enough from his mistakes. It wasn't necessary to besmirch his memory too. "I need you to have my back," he said, holding up the staff. "I'm going into the College tomorrow."

The next morning, even before dawn, they were there. All seven of the remaining mages, armed with staves and knives, looking grim. Veryn had not slept that night. Instead he had sat in the room he had rented, holding the staff in his hands and kept wondering what could happen if he failed. Aranea had tried to reassure him that he wouldn't. _Like she would know._ Despite burning his magicka with the staff to stay awake he felt like a wreck. Some mages were versed so well in it that they had no need for sleep anymore, but Veryn just felt tired and drained. His thoughts had been haunted by Northwatch Keep again. He had to win or die, as going back _there_ was no option.

A large ward blocked off the entrance to the College. It encompassed every building, but the Staff broke through it like a knife through butter. When Veryn neared the Hall of the Elements he could feel his heartbeat thrumming in his ears. The place was deserted but for the Eye and Ancano. The sight of the Thalmor's grey coat caused his breath to catch in his throat. He waited in the door opening for a few minutes, observing Ancano unnoticed and trying to gather his wits. The Altmer was channelling magicka at the Eye, enraptured by its effects and completely oblivious to anything around him. You've done this before, he told himself, gritting his teeth. He walked forward, nearly freezing when Ancano noticed him. The Thalmor smelled. He looked like he had not washed himself in weeks, with dirty and tangled hair. He paled noticeably when he saw Veryn and stepped back, never once stopping with his spells.

"You. You should be dead. I had you killed."

Veryn strengthened his grip on the Staff, making sure to feel the usual pain flare up through his fingers. He grinned at Ancano, baring his teeth.

"I came back."

He drew on his magicka and focused it at Ancano, blasting the Thalmor with fire. To his surprise, Ancano merely laughed and shrugged it off.

"Your magic can not harm me." Ancano smirked. "You think you can stop _me_? The power to unmake the world is at my fingertips."

The Eye of Magnus shattered, bursting open in a dazzling explosion of bright blue light. The outer shell of the metal surrounding it was pulled apart by Ancano's magic. With one hand, he controlled the Eye and with the other he sent a jolt of lightning at Veryn. Veryn could hear himself scream as he was knocked to the ground. The magic seared through his body, leaving excruciating pain in its wake. _Not again._ _Azura, please!_ The pain blinded him and in the distance he heard Tolfdir shout.

"The Eye! Use the Staff on the Eye!"

Veryn could feel the Eye near him. It pulsed with magicka and the Staff in his hand was reacting to it, heating up as he pointed it in the direction of the Eye. He forced his magicka through it, willing the Eye to listen to him. All of a sudden the lightning and pain ceased. Behind him, Tolfdir and some of the others had cast a ward, shutting Ancano out, at least temporarily. He could feel Ancano's pull on the Eye too and furthered his efforts, burning every bit of magicka he had. The staff burned in his hands, now uncomfortably hot.

Then the Eye closed, the metal shell snapping together. Veryn felt something tug at him, coming from deep inside the Eye. He was too weak to struggle against it and left the connection between the Staff and the Eye intact, letting himself drift along it. His vision shifted and he saw double for a moment. Then, he could see inside the Eye. From the corner of his sight he could see normally, but when he looked in front of him, everything was different. The inside of the Eye was made of clockwork, with tiny gears and pistons moving up and down, round and round, recreating the entirety of Nirn, centred around the White-Gold Tower. The Imperial City looked like a wheel when seeing it from above and then Veryn realized that it was a wheel, a cog that turned around so slowly he could hear each click of the teeth. He looked over the clockwork world in amazement, seeing the continent of Akavir off to the east, the islands of Pyandonea and the sunken remains of the home of the Redguard, everything surrounded by spiked waters. Everything was inscribed with the same flowing script that was on the outside of the Eye as well. The letters morphed before Veryns eyes, turning into the Imperial language. They contained the blueprints of the world. The means to build it, to destroy it. One nudge, here in the Eye, to the White-Gold Tower and it would be over. The letters kept coming, forming words and bringing ever more knowledge, but he couldn't comprehend it. It was too much and to truly get their meaning they needed to tell him how to become a god.

"Behind you!"

The sound came from outside, shouted by Arniel. Veryn shifted his vision and then saw Ancano behind him in the dull reflection of the Eye, ready to kill. Veryn jerked the Staff of Magnus back, shattering the connection and warded himself, turning on Ancano once again. Like the cowards the Thalmor were, Ancano broke into a run when his spell was blocked. Veryn followed him, running up the stairs to the Archmage's quarters, spells bounding off the walls, back and forth. He tried to dodge and block them, getting caught a few times, blasted Ancano in turn. Nobody came behind him anymore, turned away by the infernal storm that cascaded downwards. Once he reached the top of the stairs, Ancano seemed to realize he was trapped and blasted open the door leading to the roof of the College. Veryn breathed in the cold air as he followed outside. The sky was clear, allowing him to see as far as possible over the mountains, the statue of Azura rising up to the south. Ancano was circling him, watching the Staff of Magnus with pale, greedy eyes. Then he lunged forward, a hidden dagger in one hand and grabbing the Staff with the other. Veryn turned his head away, a split-second before the dagger would have sliced his left eye, grazing his temple instead. He tried to wrench the staff from Ancano to get it back, meeting the Thalmor's eyes.

"We know who you _really_ are," the Thalmor snarled. "And you keep being a disappointment."

Veryn growled in pain when Ancano twisted the staff to the side, trying to break Veryns grip on it.

"I am _Dragonborn._ "

His instinct took over. The words came immediately and at full force, with no need to ponder or meditate about them.

" _FUS RO DAH!_ " he Shouted.

The unrelenting force threw Ancano backwards, snapping some of his bones as he was thrown against the low stone wall surrounding the roof and then he toppled over, falling slowly at first and then disappeared from sight, screaming. Veryn heard a sickening crack when he climbed on top of the battlements and when he looked down he saw Ancano impaled on the hand of the statue of Shalidor down in the courtyard. This was it then. Revenge. Veryn felt like he should have been shouting in triumph, but the only thing he felt was apathy. He kept looking down at the grisly sight below until Tolfdir came forward from the stairs.

"We should head down, back to the Eye," the elderly man said.

Veryn felt like a Dwemer automaton when he walked down the stairs, barely registering what was going on around him. With Ancano dead and the Eye of Magnus his, why wasn't he relieved? Probably because this relative peace would last only a few days, a week at most. Once the Thalmor noticed that Ancano had suddenly ceased contact they would be swarming all of the College. Perhaps he should head off to the Sanctuary again, keep a low profile for the time being.

"We knew you would succeed." At the entrance to the Hall Quaranir was waiting, looking at the Staff of Magnus appreciatively. "You have done well."

Veryn tried to smile at him, but ended up with a tired smirk. "So you say." He looked over Quaranirs shoulder. "You brought some friends?" Around the Eye, three others were clustered, all wearing the Psijic robes.

Quaranir nodded. "We have come to take the Eye with us. The events of the last few months have shown that our world is not ready for it. If it stayed here, it ultimately would destroy the College and drive you beyond madness."

"Do you want the staff too, then?"

"No." Quaranir shook his head. "Even for the Psijic Order, that combination is too powerful, too dangerous. Keep the artefact. You have earned it. It's yours. For the time being, this will be the last time we meet each other. I wish you good luck in your future endeavours... Dragonborn."

"You as well," Veryn said, unable to shake off the faint sense of unease the Psijics always brought with them. He watched Quaranir walk away, first speaking with Tolfdir for a short while and then casting a spell at the Eye together with the other Psijics. He air around them rippled and then both the Psijics and the Eye were gone.

The next morning Veryn woke up nauseous and light headed. _Too much moon sugar._ He hadn't taken any for the past month-and-a-half, not since they arrived at the Nightgate Inn. Clearly, he had to get used to it again. Slowly he made his way up to the Archmage's tower, trying not to fall down the stairs. Tolfdir was waiting already, pouring two glasses of ale. Veryn sat down, politely declining the glass.

"Are you feeling better today?"

Veryn winced slightly at the concern in the old man's voice. "I'm doing just fine."

Tolfdir smiled. "That is good to hear. You should know that all of us here are very grateful that you have saved the College. I do not know how exactly you survived that assassination and I am not sure if I want to know all the details either." He smiled shrewdly. "The issue I want to bring to the table is a different one though. As you know, the College is currently without an Archmage. We have talked extensively about this yesterday night, while you slept and as the rector of the College of Winterhold, I would like to offer the position to you." He smiled expectantly.

Veryn stared at Tolfdir in a faint haze. "You are asking me to - no." Tolfdirs face fell. "No. I'm very honoured by your offer, Tolfdir, but I don't want to lead the College." He rubbed his head. The remains of the moon sugar numbed his thoughts, making talking easy. "You shouldn't want me to lead it either, unless you want the Thalmor to attempt another hostile takeover. They will come after the College to find out what happened to Ancano and I am not going to risk anything with them, let alone risk the people here."

Tolfdir looked at him sadly, speechless for a few seconds. "You may be right, but that does not mean I do not regret your choice."

Veryn grunted. "Things changed in the last year, Tolfdir. Even without the threat of the Thalmor, I'm not your best choice. I barely sleep any more these days and if I do sleep I wake up screaming half the time because my mind is back at Northwatch Keep. I cannot handle the responsibilities that position entails, not when I am already struggling to stay sane each day." He folded his hands together. "In fact, if anyone should lead this place, it's you. I'm sure the others agree."

 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

 

Meanwhile, miles away, in the south-east of Skyrim, Bricca hurried her way back to the Sanctuary, trying to reach the place before the sun rose. It wasn't as if the sun would _hurt_ her, but it certainly annoyed her. Whenever she travelled on her own she made sure she went outside only during the night or cloudy weather. She smirked when she passed the black door, wondering what Astrid was going to do now Bricca had already visited Volunruud. The matron was sitting in the entry hall, studying a large map of Skyrim. It was an old one, filled with new marks and additions written on it later. She noticed Bricca immediately.

"You're back." Astrid smiled. "You've taken your fair time, haven't your? And what are those rumours about the Dragonborn being assassinated? You seem to have left a big mess." The smile disappeared as soon as it had come, replaced by an angry frown.

Bricca crossed her arms, deciding to barge right into the argument. "As matron of the Sanctuary you should have known that Veryn was in bloody Winterhold. But you didn't and that left _me_ to deal with that Thalmor who wanted him dead. And guess what? I solved it, left your precious Dragonborn alive and got the payment too. There's no harm done to the Brotherhood at all." She reached for the pouch with coins, setting it on the table. "Two hundred and fifty."

"Septims?" Astrid opened the pouch and started to count out the gold.

"As you can see, it was well worth the time in the end." Bricca sat down on the edge of the table, tossing up one of the septims on the palm of her hand.

"That's great, Bricca." The smile was back again. "While you were gone, I have been thinking. Clearly, there is something going on with the Night Mother and all that and if She really did talk to you, well, it would be foolish to ignore it. Take a couple of days rest and head for Volunruud. Let's see where this all leads, hm?"

Bricca cocked her head slightly. "Yeah, about that... I took a detour on the way home. I've been there already."

Astrid blinked a few times in surprise, dumbstruck for a few seconds, but she recomposed herself again quickly. "I could have known. Who was this Motierre you met there and what did he want?"

"His family holds a seat in the Elder Council. He wants us to kill the Emperor."

"You're joking." Astrid's jaw dropped as she stared at Bricca incredulously.

"Most certainly not." Bricca tossed the coin at the table. It landed near Falkreath, standing on its side. "I have a letter from him. It probably explains more. That and an expensive amulet." She hopped to the ground, searching through her shoulder bag and putting the scroll and wrapped amulet in front of Astrid's nose. Bricca had opened the letter already, resealing it carefully after she had read it. Motierre was staying in Whiterun and the first task in his series of events appeared to involve a wedding. Astrid broke the seal and read the letter.

"Sithis." The matron put the parchment down. "This... the Emperor of Tamriel. We have not done this since Pelagius and nobody has even dared to lay a hand on him since the Oblivion Crisis!" Astrid's blue eyes glittered with enthusiasm. "Damn right we'll take on this contract. Together, you and me will show the world that the Dark Brotherhood is a force to be reckoned with!"


End file.
